Why Travel Marketers are Flying High on CTV Advertising

Author: Peter Jones, Head of Local Sales, Premion. 

Despite rising prices, the travel resurgence shows no signs of abating as consumers prioritize spending on travel and experiences — and more than half of all US adults (52%) are planning to travel for leisure in the next six months, finds Ipsos’ Q1 U.S. Travel Association Consumer Quarterly Tracker. Additionally, over one in five (22%) of US adults cite leisure travel as a top budget priority in 2023, per Insider Intelligence.

With Asia-Pacific destinations fully reopened, both domestic and international travel are in full swing for the peak summer travel season ahead. With a world of travel options for consumers, travel marketers face growing competition — and are seeking effective ways to capture attention and reach travel enthusiasts while ensuring that their ad dollars work harder and smarter. This year, eMarketer projects that 86% of US households are projected to be Connected TV (CTV) households* — and CTV advertising is increasingly valued by travel marketers for driving brand awareness and performance marketing goals. 

According to MRI-Simmons November 2022 Cord Evolution study, 80% of people who plan to travel domestically or abroad within the next 12 months watch ad-supported OTT. Among the report’s other notable audience findings:

• 93% of travel intenders who watch ad-supported OTT plan to travel domestically within the next 12 months.
• 49% of travel intenders who watch ad-supported OTT plan to travel abroad within the next 12 months.
• 49% of all U.S. travel intenders cannot be reached via traditional TV or cable.

With the availability of powerful data-rich targeting, travel marketers can tap into a myriad of sophisticated approaches to reach precise audiences in their CTV campaigns at scale — from driving brand awareness with demographic or contextual targeting to intender and even audience-first targeting. For example, with our Audience First Travel Buffs & Sightseers persona-based targeting, marketers can reach — not only consumers interested in travel and tourism — but also consumers with similar interests, such as hotel reward holders or those that shop for travel accessories online. 

Additionally, CTV ads are becoming more personalized to deliver more relevant ad experiences — and prompt consumer action. Travel and tourism brands can make their CTV campaigns more personalized with the use of dynamic creative ads. For instance, a hotel brand can embed a scannable QR code in their CTV ad to promote summer travel deals, enable viewers to make reservations and even find directions to hotel properties — or they can even create sequenced ‘storytelling’ ads to guide viewers along the customer journey from considering a vacation to planning local experiences. This adds an extra layer of relevancy for driving performance with specific localized and personalized call to actions.

Driving efficiencies and outcomes have become 2023 marketer priorities — and the ability to deliver closed-loop attribution has made streaming TV advertising a priority channel for travel marketers. With advanced destination attribution through our Arrivalist partnership, travel marketers can understand how their campaign drove destination visitation lift, where their visitors are coming from, how far they’ve traveled, how long they stay and how often they repeat their visit.

A recent Premion CTV campaign for a state tourism bureau, measured by Arrivalist, revealed that viewers exposed to our campaign are 65% more likely to travel to the destination than those not exposed. Additionally, the campaign drove higher visitation across all seasons among exposed audiences, with peak lift of +104% occurring during the summer of 2022. In proving the effectiveness in driving travel interest and website engagement, our campaign for a luxury Caribbean resort drove a 3.2x higher website visit rate than a leading competitor in a head-to-head comparison.

Travel marketers need a trusted streaming TV advertising partner that can execute locally in reaching the right consumers at the household-level, track conversions, and reduce wasted impressions. Premion is a proven partner in driving measurable outcomes for many travel brands and we’ve successfully executed a multitude of campaigns for hundreds of travel and tourism brands.

For more travel and CTV advertising insights, let’s have a conversation.

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*eMarketer, Connected TV Households, US, Sept 2022. Copyright © 2022 Insider Intelligence Inc. All Rights Reserved.

© MRI-Simmons 2023. 2022 November Cord Evolution Study, The data herein derives from a confidential, proprietary syndicated product owned by GfK US MRI, LLC.