It’s that time of year again. The sun is slowly starting to shine, the days are getting warmer, and we’re all dreaming of summer weather—and most importantly, summer vacation.
Across the northern hemisphere, consumers are starting to plan their summer holidays and travel brands have an opportunity to reach them while there is high interest.
We took at look at consumer activity in the travel vertical over the past year and noticed that although brand campaign activity is steady throughout, we saw a huge increase in click-through-rate in April and May.
The best time to invest in travel campaigns—based on this data—is now, as consumers are looking to discover you. As you plan your campaigns for the coming months, there are some best practices we think you should keep in mind.
Travel Industry Benchmark Report
Here’s how to run the perfect summer travel campaign.
Consumers will be on the hunt for travel deals in the coming months and are waiting to be inspired by beautiful pictures, heartfelt stories and captivating videos. Here are some best practices you should follow to put your best foot forward.
- Try to use images with animals, as animals drive a 237% increase in CTR for travel.
- Stay away from images with food, as food drives a 33% decrease in CTR.
- Focus on keywords like, ‘Travel’, ‘People’ and ‘Free’ to get people excited about their vacations, and mention different regions like ‘Europe’ and countries like ‘Australia’ for inspiration.
- Try some phrases like ‘Things You Should’ & ‘This Is Why’ for the best performance.
- If you’re running a video, choose a video with people doing one of the following actions: rock climbing, surfing, shouting, getting married, weight training, or dancing which have been found to increase viewability rates by 127%.
- In your video, make sure the people have emotional facial expressions, as these drive 37% higher viewability ratings.
Keep in mind that discovery users could be seeing you for the first time—the best campaigns rely on content that maps to your funnel, and helps move consumers towards a purchase as they learn more about your offering.
Inspiration: TUI Group’s recent campaign leads to 600 overnights booked.
We recently worked with P6A, TUI Group’s digital flagship editorial brand designed to increase visitors to destinations through branded content strategies. Their objective is to awake the desire to travel through inspirational and topic-driven stories while suggesting the perfect offer or package to meet those needs.
Their campaign targeted travelers in India, promoting travel to great Britain. It included eleven articles, two videos and two e-magazines; and nine articles, four trip packages and three email blasts.
Working with Taboola, P6A obtained more than 317+M impressions that converted into 249,820 visits to articles on P6A and TUI India. 4,329 of those users decided to visit pages that included TUI packages. This resulted in 96 bookings through TUI India, and 600 overnights.
While TUI Group’s campaign was extensive, the key to their success was not the amount of content or size of their campaign—they were successful by providing value to users with genuine native advertising content.
For insights on creative trends updated weekly, or to dive into specific insights by country, check out Taboola Trends.