Filtrete tapped IBM Watson Advertising (formerly The Weather Company’s ad sales business) to better understand weather conditions that cause a sales spike for air filtration products and leverage insights from weather data to better reach relevant audiences who are in regions with poor air quality.

By analyzing Filtrete’s sales data in conjunction with Watson Advertising’s WEATHERfx data, custom data analysis uncovered the seasons and local weather conditions that had the highest impact on Filtrete Air Filters. Filtrete uncovered insights such as sales spiking during the warmer transitional period between spring and summer or sales spiking for a specific region when the forecast indicated a high dew point.

Using these insights, Watson Advertising created custom WEATHERfx triggers for Filtrete so that marketing messages could automatically be delivered to relevant consumers in specific regions when they were experiencing the optimal weather conditions. By tapping into these WEATHERfx insights, Filtrete was able to ensure that their marketing messages were contextually relevant and precisely targeted to affected audiences.

Filtrete’s digital advertising campaign was available across The Weather Company’s consumer properties, which reaches an average of 250 million consumers monthly.

As a result of this campaign, Filtrete saw a positive and significant uplift of 2.4% in filter sales.

“For Filtrete™ Brand, we’ve been searching for a partner to help us align our marketing activity with weather trends that are conducive to favorable business activity,” said Drew Hoopes, Global Business Unit Manager, 3M. “Our partnership with Watson Advertising has allowed us to reach the right consumer at the right time, positively impacting the success of our programs.”