Programmatic Advertising for the Travel Industry: An In-Depth Guide

Agencies, advertisers, and publishers are switching to programmatic advertising for its ability to automate ad buying and deliver personalized ads at scale. In fact, programmatic display ad spending is projected to grow 3x faster than non-programmatic spending, making it a vital strategy across various industries, including travel.

As a travel advertiser, you can leverage this trend to enhance your marketing efforts and achieve better results. 

Programmatic advertising for the travel industry: an introduction

Programmatic advertising automates digital ad buying and selling using real-time software. This data-driven approach revolutionizes the travel industry by tapping into user behavior, location, and preferences.

Unlike traditional manual systems, programmatic ads use algorithms and data to target specific audiences. This automation enhances accuracy and efficiency, ensuring your ads reach the right people at the right time.

How travel advertisers can implement programmatic advertising

Step 1: Define your goals

Start by establishing clear, measurable objectives for your programmatic advertising campaign. As a travel advertiser, your goals might include:

• Increasing bookings
• Boosting brand awareness
• Driving website traffic

Specific goals will guide your strategy and help measure success. For example, rather than aiming to "increase bookings," set a target like "increase flight bookings by 15% in Q3.” This will help you measure success and boost accountability.

Step 2: Define your audience

Programmatic advertising lets you advertise to your target audience rather than casting a wide net. This is made possible with data-driven insights that identify and segment potential travelers based on: 

• Demographics: You can target young professionals for weekend getaways, retirees for longer vacations, or luxury travelers for high-end resort stays.
• Interest-based targeting: You can target people who have recently searched for travel-related content, such as flight comparisons or hotel reviews.
• Geolocation: You can use geographic data to advertise to people based on where they live or where they’re planning to travel.
• Lookalikes: You can use your existing customers and apply machine learning to find new audiences that look like your customers. 

You can also expand your reach by targeting users with similar traits to your best customers or retarget users who have previously interacted with your site or abandoned bookings. 

You can also do this with Quantcast Planner, our suite of audience-planning applications. It helps you identify your audience’s interests and behaviors by tracking metrics like page views, clicks, and time spent on your website. 

Step 3: Plan your campaigns 

After defining your audience, plan your campaign by:

• Allocating a budget for each segment
• Developing a timeline with key milestones and deadlines
• Establishing KPIs aligned with your goals (e.g., impressions, clicks, conversions, engagement rates)

Quantcast's demand side platform (DSP) simplifies campaign planning, using AI-driven technology to build custom predictive models based on live data. It provides a clearer view of potential outcomes, allowing you to plan accordingly. You can also pre-optimize campaigns by creating custom audiences using your keywords.

Activate these audiences with a single click for immediate impact, ensuring better campaign performance from the start.

Step 4: Develop and test your creatives

In travel advertising, compelling visuals and messages are crucial. Choose appropriate ad formats:

• Display ads
• Video ads
• Native ads
• Connected TV ads
• Audio ads

Craft impactful creative elements, including headlines, calls-to-action (CTAs), and brand messaging. And after developing your creatives, conduct A/B testing that analyzes the impact of variables:

• Headlines
• Images
• CTAs
• Ad placements

This helps identify top-performing elements.

Dynamic creative optimization (DCO) can enhance this step of programmatic advertising by automatically adjusting ad creatives in real time based on performance data. While Quantcast doesn’t directly offer DCO, the audience insights and targeting options it provides allow you to optimize your creative elements.

For example, you can adjust your ad creatives based on traveler interests, promoting family vacations or adventure getaways as appropriate.

Step 5: Launch your campaign

Once everything is set up, launch your campaign and monitor its performance closely.  

Quantcast provides detailed reporting on key metrics, which travel advertisers can use to monitor and evaluate your campaign success. The Quantcast Advertising Platform gives you access to interactive and real-time insights in the platform’s Audience Planner, Report Builder, and Insights Lab. 

Leverage Quantcast’s AI-driven engine to optimize your campaigns autonomously by analyzing real-time data and adjusting variables to meet your goals.  

Benefits of programmatic advertising in the travel industry

Here’s how programmatic advertising can help travel advertisers.

Precision targeting

Programmatic advertising allows travel advertisers to target audiences based on interests, behavior, and location, ensuring ads are seen by travelers actively planning trips. 

For example, MANGIA’S used Quantcast to boost awareness and consideration of their resorts. By leveraging real-time data and a multi-channel approach, they connected with their ideal audience, resulting in a 168% increase in site visits and a 37% increase in bookings.

Real-time optimization

The system continuously optimizes campaigns by adjusting bids and placements in real time. This way, travel advertisers maximize budget allocation to high-performing ads without manual oversight.

Cookieless advertising

Programmatic advertising’s ability to operate effectively in cookieless environments is a significant benefit for travel advertisers. 

For example, Travel Texas used Quantcast’s cookieless solutions and Brand Lift Live to reach 52% of their display audience in cookieless environments. This strategy led to a 32% overall lift in brand familiarity and a 2.6x increase with Quantcast-designed creatives. 

Cost efficiency

By automating ad buying and adjusting bids, programmatic advertising helps travel advertisers reduce ad spend by only paying for impressions likely to convert. This makes campaigns more efficient.

Data-driven insights

Programmatic platforms offer valuable data on campaign performance and audience behavior. As a result, travel advertisers can refine their targeting and messaging for future campaigns to improve engagement.

For example, P&O Cruises used Quantcast’s Brand Lift Live to gain insights into optimal ad frequency and audience engagement. This data-driven approach led to a 52% increase in brand recognition and a 35% lift in familiarity. 

Embark on your programmatic advertising journey with Quantcast

Programmatic advertising helps travel advertisers reach the right audience, improve their campaigns, and increase bookings. Using real-time data and automation makes it even easier to get better results. 

As a full-service programmatic advertising platform, Quantcast uses AI and big data to help travel advertisers target their audiences more precisely and efficiently. Gain a competitive edge with our platform and unlock the full potential of programmatic advertising. 

Try Quantcast today!