Every skier carves their own path down the mountain, but from a distance, they can all look the same — just like audiences across digital channels. Alterra Mountain Company, which operates 19 year-round mountain ski resorts and offers access to 60-plus destinations worldwide through its Ikon Pass, understands that its customers aren’t one-size-fits-all. To personalize marketing, optimize budgets, and enhance customer experience, Alterra needs a unified view of its audience — especially across its crucial streaming campaigns.

Streaming makes up nearly 43% of all TV viewing, indicating a shift toward Connected TV (CTV) and its growing relevance as a marketing channel. As more people consume content across smart TVs, gaming consoles, and other streaming devices, brands have a unique opportunity to stay top of mind and drive engagement by reaching the right audience. However, with data fragmentation and limited audience insights, it can be a challenge for brands to track engagement, measure performance, and ensure ad spend translates to conversions.

That’s where Alterra’s digital strategy team — led by Miriam Schachtman, director of marketing technology, and supported by Kevin Day, associate director of digital solutions at 85SIXTY, a digital agency that partners with Alterra — stepped in. Together, they set out to transform how Alterra harnesses first-party data to improve customer engagement, streamline ad spend, and make CTV a measurable and high-performing channel in Alterra’s paid media strategy. Schachtman and Day knew that to maximize impact, they needed a future-proof strategy for engaging CTV audiences with first-party data — and across all digital touchpoints.

To do that, they expanded Alterra’s tech stack with Adobe Real-Time CDP Collaboration — Adobe's new privacy-centric, purpose-built data collaboration application. By activating its first-party audiences with privacy-minded workflows, Alterra was able to engage in smarter targeting and measurable performance. The results came quickly. The conversion rate for Alterra’s NBCUniversal premium streaming campaign increased by 30% across three key audience segments — proving the value of first-party data collaboration and streaming, including, CTV, as a key component of Alterra’s media strategy.

A unified approach to smarter spending.

Before using Real-Time CDP Collaboration, measuring CTV performance was limited. “It’s always been part of the mix, but the challenge was proving its impact,” Day says. “Now, we’re unlocking that black box."

Because Alterra’s customer data was already unified in Adobe Real-Time CDP, their customer data platform, activating a new use case was instant — no third-party negotiations or complex data transfers were required. Now, instead of negotiating third-party agreements or manually transferring audience lists, Alterra can access audiences from Real-Time CDP in Real-Time CDP Collaboration in just a few clicks and begin executing overlap reports and activating audiences with NBCUniversal and other publishers.

“We didn’t have to figure out how to move our data from point A to point B,” Day says. “Our audiences were already in Adobe Real-Time CDP. We just flipped the switch and went live with Real-Time CDP Collaboration in the same platform. It’s a huge time saver.”

With precise targeting and deeper behavioral insights, Alterra and 85SIXTY optimize ad creative and placements, improve bid strategies, and reduce wasted media spend — ensuring that every dollar reaches high-value skiers and travelers, from frequent skiers and affluent season pass holders to luxury skiers and corporate, group, and international travelers.

From data to action: personalizing the customer journey.

For Schachtman, personalization isn’t just a strategy — it’s a necessity. Unlike brands with year-round sales cycles, ski season follows a tight, seasonal window, requiring the team to launch campaigns at exactly the right moment.

With Real-Time CDP, Alterra creates audience definitions before data is even populated, meaning they can activate customer segments in real time — a critical advantage when engaging potential travelers before they finalize their winter plans.

“We have evergreen audiences that can be reused and refined season after season,” Schachtman says. “For example, we can dynamically merge a Colorado ski resort audience with one in California, delivering tailored messaging to skiers who frequent both regions.”

This ability to act on real-time insights helps Alterra ensure that its marketing campaigns are not only reaching people but reaching them with the right message at the right time.

Collaboration and experimentation for the win.

Schachtman and Day both describe Alterra as an entrepreneurial company — one that embraces growth strategy to refine its approach to customer engagement.

“I have been consistently empowered by Alterra’s commitment to investing in consumer technology to improve guest experience over the course of my tenure with the company,” says Schachtman, who’s been with Alterra since 2017. “We invest in our people. We produce excellent results. And we never stop.”

The partnership between Alterra and 85SIXTY — powered by Adobe technology — has transformed the way their teams collaborate. With deeper insights and more agile execution, they can continually refine their approach, making every campaign more effective than the last.

A secure, future-proof approach to first-party data.

With increasing data privacy regulations, secure and privacy-minded data collaboration was a priority for Alterra. Adding Real-Time CDP Collaboration provided a privacy-minded solution that enabled first-party data sharing without exposing customer identities. “We take data governance seriously, and having controls in place through Adobe made the process straightforward,” Schachtman says.

“Any time Alterra enters into a data-sharing agreement, such as they did with NBCUniversal, there’s an element of risk and a lengthy legal approval process. But with Adobe, we were able to receive confirmation that it was all in a secure space,” Day says. “The transition went very smoothly.”

Progress over perfection.

Real-Time CDP Collaboration is helping Alterra and 85SIXTY zero in on high-value customers, personalize marketing at scale, and turn CTV into a measurable performance channel. As part of Real-Time CDP, Collaboration powers second and third-party collaborations to deliver complete customer data management.

As for the long game? Schachtman and Day believe in constant evolution, not just quick wins.

“At home, I tell my kids, ‘practice makes progress,’” Day says. “It’s not about perfecting something overnight — it’s about improving little by little, whether that’s learning to ski or refining your marketing strategy.”

Schachtman agrees but with a slight tweak. “I tell my team, ‘progress over perfection,’” she says. “Every campaign we launch, every insight we gain—it all builds toward something bigger.”

Alterra is also leveraging additional Adobe products to optimize the customer experience. They use Adobe Analytics to feed behavioral web and app data into Real-Time CDP to enrich customer profiles and Adobe Target to deliver personalized, real-time experiences across web, mobile, and other digital channels. Adobe Journey Optimizer works with Real-Time CDP to deliver personalized, cross-channel customer journeys at scale.

With Adobe Real-Time CDP Collaboration every data point sharpens Alterra’s strategy, ensuring every customer experience is as seamless and personalized as the perfect run.

Learn more about how Adobe Real-Time CDP Collaboration helps brands and publishers work together to discover and activate high-value audiences and use measurement capabilities to drive tangible results. Real-Time CDP Collaboration is available as part of Adobe Real-Time CDP or as a standalone product.

Then, check out this 2025 Adobe Summit session to learn more: Data Collaboration with Adobe: How Alterra Achieved 30% Conversion Lift with NBCUniversal

Lory Mishra is a product marketer for Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform. Prior to her role in product marketing, Mishra was a customer success lead, supporting Adobe Experience Cloud customers across various industries. With more than a decade of experience in digital marketing at Adobe and agencies, she is passionate about great customer experiences and helping brands maximize value from their technology investments. Mishra lives in Chicago with her husband and too many houseplants.