Saratoga Springs is known for its summer energy, but the full experience extends well beyond a single attraction or season. Visitors may know Saratoga, but not realize how much the region has to offer. Local businesses also face the challenge of being seen as part of the destination, rather than as isolated advertisements.
StoryStudio saw an opportunity to bring restaurants, events, cultural institutions, shops, and local businesses together in one useful digital destination, using our co-op hub product. We developed The Saratoga Experience, a custom co-op hub hosted on Hearst’s Albany Times Union publication. Its local connection to the region gave the project immediate credibility and made it a natural home for a website focused on Saratoga.
This custom digital destination is designed to help audiences discover what makes Saratoga special through one central destination. The program was designed to showcase the character of the region, help visitors and locals plan their time there, and give partners the visibility that comes from being featured alongside other businesses, attractions, and cultural organizations.ether in one place while giving local businesses and organizations a meaningful way to participate.
The program had three goals:
Each sponsor received a meaningful presence within the hub, while readers received a more complete and useful resource for Saratoga.
StoryStudio first aligned with the Albany Times Union on the central idea for the program: local life and seasonal energy. Hosting the hub on The Times Union provided editorial credibility to those in the region. StoryStudio developed the co-op hub structure, sponsorship packages, audience connection driving to a target audience, and creative direction, and digital experience.
We began with a Pinterest storyboard and wireframe, to establish the visual direction, editorial flow, sponsor placements, and interactive elements. From there, we built a package structure for businesses across Saratoga’s hospitality, retail, healthcare, cultural, entertainment, and events communities to participate.
StoryStudio developed multiple sponsorship tiers so local businesses could participate at different levels. Packages included opportunities for custom guides, sponsored stories, directory listings, event listings, map placements, social integration, and additional visibility across the hub. We took the program to market, sold eight sponsors for launch, and continued building the experience as partner commitments came together.
The Saratoga Experience brought those partners into several connected sections. Saratoga Stories featured summer partners and custom guides. Live Like a Local incorporated social content. Custom itineraries helped readers plan their time in the region, while the events section and embedded map gave them practical ways to explore. More Saratoga Stories gave additional partners space to share their businesses through traditional layouts, with logos, information cards, listings, and other brand touchpoints placed throughout the hub.
The co-op model allowed multiple sponsors to build a shared story around one local opportunity while still receiving individual visibility. Sponsors could be added, rotated, and refreshed throughout the campaign. StoryStudio drove approximately 250,000 impressions to the hub each month, while sponsorship levels provided additional guaranteed impressions and engagements for individual stories and sections.
The result was a custom travel experience that connected local businesses, editorial content, social storytelling, practical planning tools, and interactive features in one destination.
The Saratoga Experience is still mid-campaign and continues to receive traffic and engagement. The program was structured around two layers of delivery: defined sponsor package commitments and ongoing promotion of the overall co-op hub.
Across the 10+ sponsors, the available package commitments included:
These package commitments represent different forms of sponsor visibility. Impressions were guaranteed exposures delivered to individual sponsor stories, guides, or websites. Engagements were visits to a story page that lasted 30 seconds or longer. Hub-level impressions supported the larger Saratoga destination and created continued visibility for the sponsors featured throughout the experience.
To date, the campaign has delivered 3.3 million impressions and 9,466 engagements within the target audience. Since the campaign is still active, these numbers will continue to grow. The 3.3 million impressions should be viewed against the original 750,000-impression promotional goal for the hub, representing approximately 2.6 million additional impressions and more than four times the initial goal.
Engagement has also outperformed the 6,000 guaranteed engagements included in the sponsorship packages. With 9,466 engaged visits to date, the campaign has generated 3,466 additional engagements, a 58 percent overperformance. Because an engagement requires a visitor to remain on the story page for at least 30 seconds, this result shows that the audience was spending meaningful time with the content, rather than simply being exposed to an ad.
The campaign has also generated 11,801 total clicks and 409 outbound link clicks to sponsor websites, itineraries, event pages, social channels, and additional destination content. The most-clicked experiences included a walking itinerary through Saratoga Springs, a guide centered on the track, and a sponsored story about Druthers Brewing Company. Average session duration is currently 4 minutes and 13 seconds.
StoryStudio used both demographic and geographic targeting through native ad units. Seventy percent of impressions were directed to the core audience in Saratoga County, Albany County, and Schenectady County, including the following ZIP codes:
The remaining 30 percent reached a regional lifestyle audience in Lake George and the Southern Adirondacks, Saratoga County gateway communities, and Southern Vermont:
Within those geographic areas, StoryStudio targeted audiences using wealth and lifestyle indicators, including households in the top 10 to 50 percent of net worth, people with investable assets, luxury homeowners, and second-home owners.
The campaign’s performance demonstrates that the hub reached a qualified audience and held its attention. StoryStudio continues to monitor impressions, engagements, clicks, outbound activity, and sponsor visibility as the campaign progresses, with additional results expected before the flight concludes.
