Although the campaigns for different arms of the travel sector will vary, the role of display advertising in the conversion funnel shouldn’t be underestimated. However, it is necessary to scrutinise both view-through and click-through data in order to deliver a return on investment. EyeforTravel’s Ritesh Gupta explores how to go it

Unsurprisingly, the efficacy of display advertising has been questioned over the years. Little wonder considering the amount of time it takes to establish and assess just how long it takes to convert a customer. Travel entities must consider when the very first exposure to ad takes place, consider the average order value and so on. One can no longer rely only on view-through rates to know how display ads are performing. The focus is on scrutinising both view-through and click-through data to fully understand the impact of display ads in the conversion journey.

Those favouring this medium argue that highly targeted display advertising allows travel marketers to reach the most relevant users with the right information at the right time. In other words while they are researching their next trip. The key here is to ensure advertising is useful to the user, essentially part of the content experience. For example, if you are looking at Bangkok on TripAdvisor you will see creative messages from hotels within the city, offers from airlines and online travel agents (OTAs). This means that a user is much more likely to read the advertising, and continue their research experience, than they are to just click and take action. It’s all about impact.

“The result is that the measure for success for display has developed over time,” says Martin Verdon-Roe, VP global display sales at TripAdvisor. Now it takes into account exposure and downstream effects that occur to the users that see display advertising versus that those that do not. “This makes the click less relevant as a key performance indicator, as there are more significant effects that can be measured today with the right tracking tools.”

Reaching a wider audience 

Display ads are preferred as part of a multi-channel path, rather than being the only channel in the conversion funnel. So it is vital for travel marketers to know how display ads can contribute to the speed of a booking and also the average order value.

According to Verdon-Roe, the value of display over cost-per-click (CPC) link activity is that it has the potential to reach a much larger audience, while still retaining great levels of targeting for the partners objectives.

“In terms of average order size recorded by clients we do not see a big difference between CPC and cost-per-mille (CPM),” says Verdon-Roe.

According to Verdon-Roe, the speed of the booking seems to depend on the targeting applied. For example a long-haul trip tends to take longer for the user to plan than a short-haul trip, so the general trend is that the CPM is a bit higher up the booking funnel and the length of time from exposure to transaction slightly longer.

One size doesn’t fit all   

So how should one approach planning and buying for display advertising in the overall online marketing mix?

Verdon-Roesays it really depends on the business that travel companies are trying to promote, coupled with their overall mix that they buy today. For example, an OTA testing a new market would be wise to start with CPC and build up to doing CPM as CPC prices saturate. However, a hotel launching a new outfit should push forward with a heavier weight CPM campaign to drive awareness of the new property. Similarly, one would have different strategies for airlines and tourist boards depending on their needs.

Tips for top displays

Verdon-Roe recommends the following:

Do

·         Invest in the right tracking solution for your business to measure the real ROI of what you are buying online.

·         Work at finding the right creative message for your business; this can make a big difference to performance so it is really worth testing and developing creative iterations that you can test and optimise.

·         Review your KPI’s with the media owners before investing, they can often advise what will work well for you and can help you avoid costly mistakes

·         Think about your audience and where they are online, targeting to the context of the users behaviour and the content they are looking at is very powerful and normally outweighs traditional demographic targeting.

Don’t

·         Keep using just the last point of click model, it does not match a user’s behaviour and can keep you investing only in bottom funnel activities.

·         Just look at historic performance, it is important to keep testing and trying new things that can help you drive your business forwards.

·         Buy media without understanding the position on the page and how the ads serve, you don’t want to be paying for placements that the users never see.

Building confidence

One of the issues that impacts advertisers’ confidence relates to ad placements per page. If there are too many it can be tricky as a user might not see the ad. For its part, TripAdvisor recently came up with a first for the travel advertising industry by launching an initiative called  ‘Delayed Ad Call’. What this means is that firms now only pay for advertising that is seen by a user on the site.

“The advertising placements that we have below the fold are only served when a user actually scrolls their browser down to the level on the page where the ad exists, this ensures that the display advertising on TripAdvisor is even higher quality than it was before,” says Verdon-Roe.

Today can one see display ads in various formats - image, text, video and in rich-media formats. It is important to assess what sort of format is clicking with an audience. On then can one can work out creatives or the best possible combination.

It should also be noted that the issue with attribution is not only restricted to display ads. When it comes to understanding the conversion path for an online booking, Verdon-Roe says the biggest mistake made by advertisers today is not investing in a platform that allows the attribution pathway to be seen and calculated. Many advertisers see the platform as a cost and not a performance driver. As a result they do not invest and therefore having no conversions to measure.