Straight from iMedia, Dean Donaldson, Director of Digital Experience lays out his vision of digital advertising. Book yourself 10 minutes and 42 seconds and take a peek into the future.
While the business of operating an airline has remained more or less the same in the last decade, the business of selling airline tickets and filling up the seats has changed dramatically. In the past, travel agents typically acted as intermediaries between passengers and airlines. Nowadays, many ‘in the flesh’ travel agents have been replaced by browsers, online travel agents and airline websites.
In a recent survey, about 34% of US internet users indicated that they used the Internet to research airfares. According to the survey, this is the most popular travel related research done online. An industry study indicates that 2007 was the first year in which online spending on travel in the US has exceeded offline spending.
What better place to advertise airlines than right at the point of sale—online? Airlines are responding quickly and are expected to double their spending on online marketing from $2.5 billion to over $5.0 billion in five years, according to Forrester.
For the purpose of this study, Eyeblaster Research crunched the results of hundreds of millions of airline impressions worldwide. The results suggest that using Rich Media more than doubles the direct response effectiveness of airline campaigns, both in terms of CTR and of Conversion Rate. Homepages, travel, news and finance have the best performance in terms of conversion rate.
For branding campaigns, news, travel, finance, and instant messaging are the best performing environments in terms of Dwell Rate. This is good news for airlines, as news, finance and particularly travel tend to draw more affluent crowds.
Analyzing the frequency of Standard Banners suggests that the optimal direct response frequency for airlines is ~4 impressions. Still, about 82% of users were underexposed, which means that there is still room to improve targeting and increase the size of campaigns.
Regardless of the aim of the campaigns or the formats and placements, online display advertising offers an indispensable strategic advantage for Airlines. Display advertising is a flexible tool to generate instant demand for yield management. It is now easy, with tools such as Smart Versioning, to align ads and messaging with empty flights, even at the last minute. With the economics of airlines, occupying an empty seat on a flight that is about to take off contributes directly to the bottom line. With this in mind, online display advertising can bring ROI to new heights.
For the full research Digital Advertising for Airlines: Book Every Seat – Even the Middle Ones, click here to download.
Ariel Geifman, Research Analyst
Eyeblaster CEO and Co-Founder Gal Trifon was recently interviewed by Laurie Sullivan in OMMA Magazine. He describes the significant investment made to develop MediaMind by Eyeblaster and bring it to market. Click here to read the full interview in MediaPost.
The AMP Energy Rock Off! concert, the culmination of a rock band contest designed to engage consumers 18 to 25 with the beverage, was held on June 20, 2009 in Toronto and simultaneously streamed on Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/AMPenergycanada . The winning band – GSpot Boyz from York University -was awarded $100,000.
OMD Canada planned and executed the media for the entire campaign, BBDO/Proximity developed the stand-out creative, and Eyeblaster was chosen to power the Facebook streaming for the finale.
Prior to the concert, the AMP Your Game National Gaming Tour travelled to 39 college and university campuses across Canada from February to April auditioning talented gamers in a national Rock Band 2TM contest. At each campus, a winning band was declared and moved onto the semi-finals on the AMP ENERGY Canada Facebook page. Each performance video was posted for one week and the bands solicited votes for their video.
The campaign resulted in more than 15,600 Facebook fans for the brand, nearly 257,000 visits to its Facebook page, and more than 61,000 votes. The tour, which also included opportunities to play other video games and product sampling, generated over 151,000 AMP beverage trials. And the average time spent viewing the stream during the event was 567 seconds (approx. 9½ minutes!).
The ability to do a live stream on a social site such as Facebook enables consumers to “attend” events they might otherwise miss, in an environment in which they’re comfortable, and obviously magnifies the reach of a sponsored event far beyond what has been possible in the past.
