Travel Advertisers on Mobile

Travel advertisers are already using mobile as a ‘reach’ vehicle, indulging in cross platform advertising and meeting their local marketing needs with mobile to reach out to new customers.

These advertisers range from tourism authorities, airlines to online booking services.

For many, these often mean building campaigns that are specifically designed to help them connect with local consumers. Targeting locally is just the first step though, and after that, advertisers need to create a mobile experience that is relevant for these consumers, and will drive engagement.

A recently launched (Nov 2014) Turkish Airline campaign shows cross platform (TV, cinema, press, digital, outdoor and social media) advertising being interpreted in a creative manner to drive engagement.

(Click to view video)

In a previous campaign for the airline, which was viewed more than 139 million times on YouTube, footballer Lionel Messi raced basketball player Kobe Bryant around the world in a ‘Selfie Shoot-out’. In this new spot, Messi is chased by fellow footballer Didier Drogba in a contest to visit the most exotic restaurants.

In this campaign, mobile banners are linked to an online video hosted on YouTube (47 million views in 2 weeks) but the campaign takes cross platform to another level with a hashtag element (#EpicFood) which is promoted at the end of the clip. The campaign also supports a call for viewers to upload their own epic travel photos through EpicFoodMap.com

Engagement of course can mean different things to different advertisers. In another travel related campaign Tune Hotels creates an immersive engagement using Rich Media banners and video.

(On a PC the banner expands when clicked)

Key in all these campaigns are the role of mobile and the role it plays in an integrated campaign. This makes sense as our user studies in Mar 2013 revealed :-

• 9% travel domestically or abroad for work at least once a month and 
• 10% travel abroad for their annual vacations while 18% travel domestically. 
• Users turn to social media first for recommendations (14%) when researching a trip and 11% search for user ratings and hotel reviews on their mobiles.