Gone are the days of two empty glasses of red wine on the table of a slick media agency and a handshake signaling the commitment to buy, for example, TV advertising space or a banner page on Yahoo. Today it is all about using ‘big data’ to target the right consumer, with the right offer and in real-time, as Pamela Whitby finds out

There are many great ways and means for hotel companies to market themselves today. They can make generic advertising proposals or offers via display advertising. They can bid on Google against everybody else for traffic. They can pay an airline to be featured on their site or advertise with an OTA like Expedia or Priceline to raise the profile of their brand.

While these efforts seem to be working - today travel-related transactions account for a third of all ecommerce revenue, according to Comscore – the technology is now here to streamline these processes even further. Stephen Taylor, VP and international managing director, Sojern,a data-driven traveller engagement platform,says nearly every single marketing route today is relatively untargeted and tends to involve somebody else’s brand sitting in between their brand and the consumer. Using ‘big data’ and ‘programmatic buying’ technology, Sojern, calls this move away from generic advertising is the ‘third wave’ of online marketing distribution. “We’ve been through the big OTAs rising, then came the meta-search companies,” he says. “Now we taking all this data and insight into the travellers intent and using it in a way that is even more relevant to the consumer without us having to put our Sojern brand in the middle of it all.”

Dealing in data and traveller intent

For Sojern’s customers, which include everything from big-name hotels to meta-search firms, airlines, car rental companies and tourist boards, the primary aim is “to put heads on beds and people behind steering wheels,” says Taylor. Working primarily on a cost-per-acquisition, or even cost of revenue, performance basis (rather than a CPM model) the simple truth is that if the technology doesn’t deliver, Sojern’s business doesn’t stack up.  But with more than double year-over-year growth in revenue and 500+ global customers, it seems that the business model – which involves a strong focus on technology development – is working.

By forming so-called ‘data partnerships’ with some of the biggest names in travel - particularly airlines - Taylor says the company has been able to capture huge amounts of anonymous search data. So, for example, the technology allows Sojern to know if someone is looking to go from New York to Seattle on June 4^th in business class, and is often also able to capture booking and confirmation information. “By capturing this incredible detail from multiple players this adds up to over 100 million unique anonymous user profiles and billions of traveller intent data points which is very powerful stuff,” he says.

Sojern then takes this data aggregates, analyses and through a process called real-time bidding is able to reach those people while they are browsing on websites all around the world. “So yesterday we knew they were searching for flights from New York to Seattle and now we can serve them with very relevant, precise advertising on behalf of a car hire company, hotel company or tourist board,” he says.

A new e-commerce platform

Essentially advertising is the vehicle for Sojern’s business but ultimately it’s aims to be a platform that makes the marketing and distribution process far more efficient for travel brands, says Taylor. This so-called programmatic buying means putting a branded offer in front of the right person at the right time, without anybody else’s brand getting in the way. Instead of pre-buying ad space, you can bid in real-time to serve an ad to a specific person based on their travel intent. “In other words, if you are a Parisian hotel you no longer have to buy ad space for people who have never dreamed of visiting Paris. And because clicks are being tracked as well, it is possible to become even more targeted as you get to understand people’s responses,” says Taylor adding that every day, every hour, the algorithm is becoming more efficient.

The proof is in the performance-driven model.  “Of course there absolutely are things that we don’t always know but the whole process is about making offers more relevant and accurate than the alternatives.”

Taylor admits however that the challenge – and the beauty - of this model like is that every campaign is different. The aim is to constantly refine by working with, for example, a hotel group to look at data attributes of various segments. Starting with a number of different creative campaigns, with a number of different data cells (eg. families looking for adventure), Sojern then monitors these responses and fine tunes over time.  “It is an on going, constantly changing optimisation process of refining the campaign to make it more and more effective,” says Taylor. “What this looks like for a car rental company, a luxury hotel or a resort is utterly different.” 

The technology is here now, the data is available but ultimately it is always about whether the marketing investment delivered conversions. Fundamentally every aspect of marketing comes down to this: do more people buy my product as a result of taking these steps? While a lot of technology and data work have made this possible the main enabling factor is that today is the ability to capture data in an ‘anonymous’ highly confidential way and in vast quantities. It also facilitates programmatic buying or real-time bidding which lets you get to the right person, at the right time and in real-time. It is no longer about buying a chunk of ads on Yahoo and hoping for the best.

It that helps travel brands make their processes more efficient to drive more direct bookings then that has to be a good thing.

For more insights from Stephen Taylor, VP and international managing director at Sojern,join us at the EyeforTravel.com Travel Distribution Summit Europe in London (May 23-24)