Jane Butler, Google's managing director for travel in the US, recently wrote a guest post for tnooz regarding remarketing display ads. Here in the UK, we've also seen travel advertisers achieve great results with display remarketing and the points below are as relevant in Europe as they are in the US.

Case study: How display ad Remarketing works in travel

I’ve been working at the intersection of travel and online marketing for almost 15 years now and while many things have changed, one thing has not.

Travel marketers continue to produce some of the most innovative and effective online campaigns across all industries.

Years ago, travel marketers were some of the true pioneers of search marketing; they were among the first to use advanced bidding systems and scale these programs as robust marketing and distribution channels.

“What would travel marketers do?” was a frequently asked question in marketing circles (though not a frequently worn “WWTMD” bracelet, despite my best efforts), and I spent a lot of time explaining to others how best practices from travel could be lessons for other industries as well.

Today, we’re seeing travel marketers apply their online savvy to non-search channels too. Display advertising is one area that is currently popping and not surprisingly, travel has again become the category to watch.

So, you may be asking yourself, what’s working and how do I get in on it?

Discussing display is a bit like discussing travel – it’s a broad category and there’s a whole lot going on.

For the purposes of this piece, I’ll look at one display product, called Remarketing, and one way a travel marketer, IHG (Intercontinental Hotels Group), found it to be useful.

But first things first: what, or more specifically, where, is display?

Display ads on any service, but in our case, from Google (such as rich-media, banners, video, text, and more) are served on the Google Display Network, Google’s network of over one million AdSense partner and Ad Exchange sites across the web. Users may see display ads on both 3rd party websites, and/or Google-owned sites, like YouTube.

Remarketing allows marketers to re-engage users who’ve previously visited their websites as they browse sites across the network. Advertisers, including a large number of travel companies, are finding Remarketing campaigns to be very effective and they’re investing more in them.

Remarketing also benefits users, as they may see more special discounts and offers – cheap flights or hotel deals, for example — from sites they’ve previously shown an interest in.

For those users who don’t want to see these ads, our Ads Preferences Manager provides granular privacy controls and an easy way to opt-out. Online publishers like Remarketing as well because it leads to more investment into display advertising, helps to bring new advertisers, and grows the overall display ad pie.

IHG’s experience with Remarketing is instructive. The hotel company observed a pattern among many of its sites’ visitors. IHG saw that some users would go to one of their hotel brand sites and browse, but would not book a stay.

IHG ran ads for its hotel brands, which include Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza, and InterContinental, across the Google Display Network, in some cases offering specials to users who had previously shown interest in one of them.

This campaign yielded some pretty impressive results:

Remarketing ads had a 21% higher overall click-thru-rate compared to remarketing campaigns on other ad networks.

Clicks increased by 55% after IHG introduced text ads into their US campaign.

IHG increased budget by 100% as a result of campaign performance.

This is only one of the approaches that marketers have used in their Remarketing campaigns.

We’ve also seen other travel marketers – cruise lines and car rental services, for example – advertise special offers to recent “lookers” while they are elsewhere on the web and drive them back to their web sites to book.

In addition, some airlines are using Remarketing as a tool to upsell online customers (who have already booked a flight) with ancillary services such as boarding priority, travel insurance, etc. The possibilities go on and on.

The competition for travel consumers has never been higher and that means targeted, high-ROI campaigns are more important than ever.

Remarketing is one of the most exciting products I’ve seen in recent years that delivers on this front and, based on the budget increases we’re seeing in this area, I’m not the only one excited about its potential.

Guest post by Jane Butler, managing director for travel, US

Christmas And Ski Queries Start Rising In Late July

By Michael Wicks, Industry Analyst

The nights are falling earlier and X-Factor is starting this weekend. This must mean it’s the end of Summer. Surely too early for people to start thinking about Christmas holidays and ski season though?

Well, in a nutshell, no.





Graph 1 shows the seasonality of Christmas-related queries over the past four years, with the purple line representing the average. Christmas queries tend to increase in volume from around week 30 (late July).






However, as queries begin to peak, the average depth (number of ads shown per query, or auction intensity) begins to fall, as is evident in Graph 2. This is a common scenario across a number of categories; when query volume increases this is often because there are more distinct queries and advertisers are slow to take advantage of this.






The story is much the same for ski queries, which also start to rise from late July, rising steadily before peaking in week 2 of the following year (please see Chart 3). Average depth is fairly stable for ski-related queries, with a slight fall towards the end of the ski season.


So, the lesson for advertisers is that they should already be planning their Christmas and ski season activity, to give them a head start before the rush at the end of the year.

Seasonal Query Trends

In previous blog posts, we’ve looked at how queries related to overall Travel or particular Travel products vary over time, or in the build up to key events.

Our latest piece of analysis takes a look at the types of holiday queries that Google users search for, and how these vary throughout the year.

Key Findings:
• There are twice as many Cheap or Budget queries in summer as there are in the winter
• We get 3 - 4 times more Late or Last minute queries in the summer compared with the winter.
• The proportion of both Cheap or Budget and Late or Last minute peaks in summer months and declines in winter, accounting for around 15% and 5% of total queries, respectively.
• The opposite is true for Destination and Generic queries, where the proportion of queries increases in the winter and declines in the summer.
• In terms of volume, Destination and Generic queries account for over double those of other types in the winter. However, in the summer Cheap or Budget queries account for nearly the same volume as destination queries.
Examples of the different types queries used in this analysis include:
Generic: Holidays, holidays 2010,
Destination: Holidays in Spain, Dubai Holidays
Cheap/Budget: Cheap Holidays, Low cost holidays, Budget Breaks
Cheap & Destination: Cheap holiday in Cyprus, All Inclusive holidays Turkey
Late/Last Minute: Late deal holidays, last minute holidays abroad, late availability deals.

Posted by Rashad Sharif, Industry Analyst.

The Word on the Street - Travel

More videos! But this time we take to the streets. As the summer holiday season is now upon us, our Google on the Street Team have been out talking to consumers about their travel plans.

Last year, 1 in 3 Brits spent an entire day trying to find the best holiday deals online (Source: Greenbee.com survey, January 2009). Are consumers still as keen to find the best deals online now that the economy has shown signs of recovery?

Watch our short video to find out what they said in response to the following questions:
How do you decide where to go on holiday?
Do you prefer to book your holidays in store, on the phone or online?
How important is the internet when deciding where to go?
Do you use online videos to research your holiday?

think with Google: Travel Industry Leaders Share Their Thoughts

YouTube has long been a place to come to look for information and to connect with other people with similar interests. In the same vein, we have launched "think", Google UK's new platform for sharing business insights and viewpoints delivered in bite-sized, inspiring and actionable videos.

The channel has some of the UK's leading thinkers offering their insights on strategy, trends, consumer insights and more. Contributors already include EasyJets' Founder, Sir Stelios Haji-Loannou, and Cheapflights' Media's Global Sales Director, Francesca Essary, and many other inspiring people.



As always, viewers will be able to rate videos, leave comments and subscribe. The hope is that this will become a thriving business community in the spirit of YouTube – so head to the channel, listen to the thinkers and feel free to make your voice heard.

YouTube.com/think

Christoffer Klemming
B2B Marketing, Google UK

UK Travellers go online as the England team returns home

Last week we predicted around a 7% Week on Week (WoW) increase in Travel queries following England's departure from the World Cup.

Latest data shows that the week after England team's departure from the World Cup:
Travel Queries rose by +9% WoW.
Clicks on Travel ads increase by +15% WoW.

The fact that clicks on Travel ads grew at a faster rate than queries suggests that the consumers who are searching for Travel products now, are looking to purchase in the near future, rather than just researching holiday destinations.

These Week on Week increases occurred across all sectors of Travel. Flights and Hotels categories showed the highest click and query growth.

Rashad Sharif, Industry Analyst

Did the World Cup affect Travel queries?

Posted by Rashad Sharif, Industry Analyst.

Following England's departure from the World Cup last Sunday, I've attempted to quantify the impact this year's tournament has had on UK Travel queries.

Main findings:
• We would have expected 10% more queries and 8% more clicks in the past 3 weeks had the world cup not taken place.
• Package Holiday & Car Hire queries/clicks were most impacted, though all Travel sectors were affected.
• If 2010 follows 2006 seasonality, we expect a 7% increase in travel queries this week.
Estimates take into consideration: Current YoY average growth rates, 2006 seasonality, last year’s trends and month on month growth rates.

The graphs above illustrate the differences in growth rates as a result of the World Cup for each Travel sector.