Nicole Brownell is COO of Zartico, a leading marketing technology company that applies advanced data science and proprietary technology to deliver innovative marketing performance solutions to the travel and entertainment industries. By transforming complex data into actionable insights, Zartico illuminates the hidden patterns of people and places, empowering marketers to identify and engage their ideal customers optimally, optimize marketing tactics to maximize effectiveness and efficiency and communicate real-world impact.
Zartico’s mission is to empower organizations to realize the possibilities of the world’s places through improved data intelligence and strategic decision-making. With a full spectrum of data science, benchmarking, and analytical tools, ZDOS® harnesses and streamlines complex data for destinations to use in marketing, growth management, and sustainability efforts. Based in Salt Lake City, Utah, Zartico has decades of experience in technology, tourism, destination, and travel marketing.
Zartico is introducing its new, industry-leading Digital Campaign Optimization (DCO) attribution product. Built and guided through a 6-month pilot alongside leading agencies that specialize in travel and place-based marketing solutions such as Miles Partnership, MMGY, BVK, and Noble Studios, DCO’s suite includes client-direct outputs, and an Agency Connect feed for advanced data modeling. Metrics are focused on performance and the ability to optimize campaigns for maximum impact and Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).
Impression metrics answer questions such as: Am I serving ads to the right audiences, at the right frequencies? And what is the optimal reach and frequency for conversions? Conversion metrics allow campaign optimization based on visitation and visitation purposes while also providing timing between ads and visits. Comparison metrics consider if campaign tactics are aligned with ad-influenced behavior if a campaign is distributing visitors throughout the destination, and if all marketing efforts combined are influencing quality visits and impact. Unlike other products that emphasize reporting or monitoring, Zartico’s DCO activates action and tactical strategy.
Why is DCO a game-changer for travel and place-based marketing?
DCO redefines marketing optimization by solving one of the biggest challenges in place-based marketing—connecting media investment to real-world economic impact. Traditional attribution models are fragmented, outdated, and often misleading, leaving marketers without a clear way to measure what’s actually driving visitation, spending, and overnight stays.
DCO is amplified by the power of Zartico’s Integrated Data Model (IDM), and guesswork is eliminated across all marketing spend capturing campaign lift across all marketing tactics. The advanced technology includes integrating raw, unbiased data streams—spending, lodging, geolocation, and website activity as fuel for our machine learning models that surface consumer insights effortlessly—-Think of IDM as the OpenAI of destination marketing, bringing advanced intelligence to every marketing decision without requiring complex data analysis.
What sets DCO further apart is that we have also solved the reliance on selective data, Zartico’s patent-pending data processing practices, and advanced place-based strategy maps locations in high resolution and with full coverage—ensuring that both metrics are provided and therefore decisions can be made with a complete dataset, not a partial or biased view. You cannot rely on conversions or behavioral trends with limited inputs. This isn’t just another attribution tool; it’s a true optimization engine that helps place-based marketers make smarter, data-backed decisions in real-time.
What kinds of questions does DCO answer?
DCO helps answer the questions that truly matter—the ones that transform your marketing strategy, not just track performance. It helps you identify who your highest-value visitors are, how they behave, and what influences their decisions. With real-time insights, you can see which campaigns are driving impact, optimize media mid-flight, and ensure you’re reaching the right audiences at the right time. No more waiting months for results or relying on fragmented data—DCO gives you clear, actionable answers when you need them.
Beyond campaign optimization, DCO helps you measure localized impact and benchmark performance over time. How did this weekend compare to last year? Are visitors staying longer or spending more? What gaps and opportunities exist in your strategy? It also makes it easy to communicate results with stakeholders, giving them transparent, data-backed insights on how marketing investments are driving economic growth. With DCO, you’re not just tracking metrics—you’re making smarter decisions that create real-world impact.
How does DCO ensure data quality?
This is something Zartico takes very seriously. The data sets we work with are incredibly powerful, which means we have a huge responsibility not only to collect and store them correctly but also to deploy them ethically. We source our raw data from trusted providers who collect and protect the information based on the highest standards, complying with both GDPR and CCPA requirements. All of the data in these streams — and in partner-provided sources such as Facebook or Google Analytics — is fully anonymized. And we apply industry best practices to secure our data within our products.
But our responsibility goes far beyond what’s required by law. It all lives in Zartico’s IDM. Everything begins with processing full raw data feeds, not portions, and bringing in multiple data sources for stability and reliability. Raw data is very dirty and it’s our job to clean the data of the noise, like the false signals and anomalies. At Zartico we take this so much further, and it is to our advantage—From our patent pending hotspot removal and normalization process to the high-resolution mapping and full coverage unbiased view, every step and process is considered.
Why have previous technologies come up short in real-time, action-based data analysis?
Digital Campaign Optimization (DCO) is an optimization product Zartico developed in collaboration with four industry-leading agencies. Our mission was simple: Build a product we can rely on, with a transparent methodology to maximize investments. DCO reimagines the marketing attribution model, tying ad impressions to on-the-ground observations, with behavioral data along the way, to drive tangible ROI. DCO links marketing efforts to measurable outcomes, optimizes digital investment strategies, and maximizes return.
Traditional marketing attribution models have always struggled to connect digital media efforts with real-world impact. Click-based models are too simplistic, ignoring offline behaviors, while expensive controlled experiments require halting campaigns—something no brand wants to do. Last-touch attribution over-credits the final interaction, missing the full consumer journey, and marketing mix modeling (MMM) takes months to deliver insights that aren’t actionable in real time. The result? Marketers are left with fragmented data, uncertainty, and a healthy dose of skepticism.
That’s why we built the Zartico IDM—the first and only solutions platform designed to measure marketing impact with transparent, statistically valid methods. Instead of relying on assumptions, IDM ties media investment directly to economic outcomes, using real behavioral data from geolocation, spending, and lodging. Our proprietary lift calculations measure the true influence of universal ad and campaign exposure, not just digital, showing whether visitors spend more, stay longer, or move differently based on campaign impact. With IDM, place-based marketers finally have a reliable, real-time approach to optimize campaigns, reduce waste, and maximize ROI—without guesswork.
How Did Zartico Become an Industry Leader with This Technology?
Zartico delivers the only fully integrated marketing optimization platform, built on trust and designed in collaboration with industry leaders. Four agencies challenged us to create a trusted, differentiated product—and we delivered. The goal wasn’t just to introduce new metrics, but to ensure that every data point is backable, auditable, and accurate.
Here’s what sets us apart:
- Unmatched Data Integrity: Instead of relying on regional snapshots, we purchase the full feed, providing a complete and unbiased view.
- Beyond Reporting—Into Optimization: Our continuous delivery model shifts the focus from static reporting to active optimization, reducing waste, maximizing budget efficiency, and enabling destinations to do more with less.
- Next-Level Geospatial Insights: Our high-resolution mapping technology provides full coverage, with continuous updates that eliminate bias caused by fixed POIs. You have to have full coverage to see conversions, not a limited view.
- True Independence: We are not in the media sales business, ensuring our performance measurements remain unbiased.
- Agency Connect Allows For Seamless Integration: We integrate directly with agencies via Agency Connect, ensuring a neutral and trusted source of advanced marketing intelligence while empowering them to deploy advanced metrics.
This is why Zartico stands at the forefront of marketing optimization—helping marketers make smarter, data-driven decisions with full confidence.
How is the work that Zartico is doing going to positively impact the travel industry?
Zartico is redefining place-based marketing by giving destinations, places and travel brands the real-time, data-driven insights they need to make smarter decisions. Instead of relying on fragmented data, we bring everything together into one powerful platform, helping marketers identify the right audiences, optimize campaigns in real-time, and prove impact with scientific accuracy. Having this ability enables places for the first time to manage their growth by influencing visitor behaviors by understanding them.
Leveraging visitor insights for marketing activates the power to influence audiences in times of need or to manage overcrowding. Marketers can now target visitor markets who move through their destinations in ways that foster a quality visit and measure with valuable impact. With our IDM insights, you can connect more personalized to attract visitors, like food lovers for a restaurant week or music fans for a concert or festival. Ultimately, we’re about making marketing understandable and measurable, while empowering marketers to refine their strategies, stretch budgets further, and create more meaningful visitor experiences.
At its core, Zartico is about making marketing measurable—helping travel and entertainment destinations find more of the right visitors at the right time.
