-
6 Ways It Pays to Use Facebook Dynamic Ads for Travel
Facebook Dynamic Ads for Travel (DAT) is a specialized advertising format that enables marketers to personalize ads to people who are in process of planning a trip, across Facebook, Instagram, and the Facebook Audience Network.
It’s no secret that many people turn to social media to help them discover and book travel. Today, travelers spend 5x more time on Facebook than on travel-related apps, sites, and searches, with 5 million businesses now advertising across the social network each month.
Industry-leading travel marketers are utilizing a full suite of travel ad products to move travelers through the path to purchase on Facebook. Each ad format serves a different objective, such as email capture, website clicks, video views, and so on. Depending on your objective, you have a variety of ad types and targeting options to help you maximize results.
But if you’re looking for the highest performing ad option most likely to help you increase direct bookings, look no further than Facebook’s Dynamic Ads for Travel. To help advertisers make the most of Facebook DAT, working alongside our teammates at Adphorus, we’ve published Your Complete Guide to Facebook Dynamic Ads for Travel.
In the meantime, here are six key ways that it pays to use Facebook’s Dynamic Ads for Travel (DAT):
1. Maximize the Impact of Your Ad Spend
One of the biggest benefits of Dynamic Ads for Travel is that you can reduce unnecessary ad spend to increase ROI. How does this work? DAT lets you ensure your ads are only shown to users leading up to their departure or check-in date, so you aren’t mistakenly serving your ads to someone in August who took their trip in April.
But what happens if a hotel becomes fully booked? Facebook’s recommendation engine will look at specific variables such as DMA or star rating, and automatically recommend suitable alternatives. And what if a traveler has seen your ad multiple times without engaging? In this case, the recommendation engine will again step in to optimize the user experience and avoid delivering impressions unlikely to generate engagement.
2. Retarget Travelers to Move Searching to Booking
Once a traveler has moved into the planning stage, they begin searching for specific destinations and brand names. Research has shown that brands considered during a traveler’s initial search are more than two times as likely to be purchased as brands considered later in the path to purchase (source). So, reaching users with your brand message early in their process is key to winning their business.
Using Facebook Dynamic Ads for Travel, advertisers use intent data to retarget travelers on Facebook in real time with automatically optimized ad content and a customized landing page. Delivering a higher level of personalization to travelers via Facebook DAT has proven to be very effective for driving bookings for travel advertisers across the world. For example, MakeMyTrip, India’s leading OTA, observed 20x growth in mobile bookings and 2x growth in website bookings using Facebook DAT through the Adphorus platform.
3. Target the Right Audience Through the Booking Funnel
Refined tracking allows you to determine which stage of the booking funnel a traveler is at and their intent to book.
- Are they merely exploring ideas for their next holiday?
- Have they looked at your hotel?
- What dates are they interested in?
Answers to such questions will help determine whether you first promote a certain destination to them, or jump right to an offer for a business class upgrade or a double room over Valentine’s weekend at your seaside hotel. This will help you provide the most bespoke messaging possible.
Read More: How Hotels Can Use Facebook Throughout the Purchase Funnel
4. Keep Ads Up-To-Date with Dynamic Price and Availability
The fluctuation of pricing and availability of travel products can make it incredibly challenging to advertise accurately. But Dynamic Ads for Travel has you covered. Facebook DAT integrates specialized data feeds to help you systematically update ad campaigns with ease. These extra data feeds are sent to Facebook on a regular basis so that the product information you display is the most up-to-date. Facebook’s algorithms will automatically display the most relevant price and availability that matches a specific user’s travel intent—resulting in higher ad engagement and conversion rates.
Read More: Learn How Air France Reduced Cost per Booking by 57% with Dynamic Ads for Travel
5. Increase ROAS with Upsell and Cross-sell Opportunities
Facebook Dynamic Ads for Travel’s targeting capabilities let you set up rules for automatically upselling and cross-selling after the user’s initial purchase, helping you drive higher revenue per traveler. For example, if someone books a room with your hotel over the holidays, you can target messages for room upgrades or spa packages. For flights, you could show seat upgrades or meal selections before check-in.
6. Partner with Sojern and Dynamic Ads for Travel
Rather than looking at DAT in isolation, Sojern offers travel brands the additional capability of analyzing traveler behavior outside of Facebook, including search and booking data on OTA sites, meta search sites, and other travel websites and apps. By partnering with Sojern, Fairmont Hotels increased their overall campaign booking revenue by 20% and mobile-driven revenue by 55%.
“[The Sojern team] acted as an extension of our in-house team—providing a new depth of insights to our customer behavior that weren’t available to us without the partnership—as well as optimizations, analysis and campaign efficiencies that far exceeded our expectations and helped maximize our spend.”
– Chris Georgas Manager Digital Marketing, FRHI Hotels & Resorts
Now that you know the key benefits of using Facebook Dynamic Ads for Travel, get ready to take your advertising to the next level to turn traveler intent into action. Learn all there is to know about what to use, and how to optimize your Facebook advertising efforts by downloading our ebook, Your Complete Guide to Facebook Dynamic Ads for Travel.
About Amy Higgins
Hannah is Sojern’s Content Marketing Associate. Originally from Pennsylvania, she enjoys the change of pace in the Midwest, but misses an authentic Philly Cheesesteak.