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It’s been a historically rough year for the travel and tourism industry. Travel has experienced a greater decline in digital ad spending than any other industry due to COVID-19, and U.S. digital travel sales are expected to decrease by 44.7% in 2020.
Despite these challenges, there’s still an opportunity for brands and agencies to advertise in a less competitive environment and take part in the $100+ billion of digital travel sales expected in 2021.
Effective targeting, messaging, and measurement will always be key pieces to successful tourism marketing campaigns, but efficiency is more important than ever while digital media budgets are limited.
There’s an overwhelming amount of third party data available to tourism advertisers, especially when it comes to travel display advertising. From in-market segments for flights, hotels, and car rentals, to weather triggers and historical location data, the options are endless.
However, the most powerful targeting available still comes from first party data. Take advantage of CRM lists and place site pixels to create segmented retargeting audiences and lookalike models. As the digital advertising industry moves toward a cookieless world, this data will prove to be more and more valuable.
The best travel ads take both the target audience and timing of the campaign into consideration. Use everything you know about potential tourists and their motivations to create impactful ads. Here are few examples:
It’s also important to react to any negative situations in the destination(s) you’re promoting. If there’s a natural disaster or COVID-19 outbreak in the destination, consider shifting to a more inspirational or uplifting recovery message rather than putting forward an immediate call-to-action. This keeps your brand top of mind without coming off as insensitive or putting the public in danger.
To prove the success of tourism marketing campaigns, it’s essential to set digital goals and KPIs that align with your business priorities and then implement the proper tracking to measure against those goals. Brands that handle direct bookings—like airlines, car rentals, and hotels—may be able to back into a CPA or ROI goal needed to stay profitable.
For destination marketing organizations or tourism boards that have a broader objective to increase brand awareness or overall tourism, key pageviews and site content can be tracked to make sure the target audience stays engaged after being exposed to digital advertising.
In situations where tracking sales or website content doesn’t align with the goals of the campaign, brand lift studies or verified walk-in lift studies can be helpful in evaluating the success of a campaign.
With a thoughtful strategy, brands and travel advertising agencies that keep a strong presence in 2020 can position themselves well for 2021 as digital travel sales start to rebound.
Connect with us to learn more about Centro’s travel marketing services!
For as many digital years as I can remember, we’ve been discussing the “future” of video advertising. Most of that conversation revolves around two topics:
To be sure, these are both critical considerations for a modern media strategy. Broadcast is a stubborn (and reliable) dinosaur, but digital channels have been capturing more eyeballs and ad dollars for years now. If you aren’t producing mobile-optimized and short-form video, and you haven’t expanded your media mix to include OTT, or perhaps even live streaming, you’re being left behind.
So, get to it! You’re not alone—we have a great team of strategists to help.
On the other hand, if you’re one of those forward-thinking advertisers who’s already mastered the sponsored Instagram story and streaming video, you’re likely wondering what else you can do to guide your digital video strategy into 2021 and beyond.
Here are two modest predictions for the future of video.
The days of the third-party browser cookie are numbered. We’ve known this for some time, but with Google announcing a 2022 cookie sunset date for Chrome and its 66% browser market share, contingency planning is in full effect across the industry.
The death of the cookie, combined with looming privacy regulation, opens the door for an old friend—contextual targeting. This may seem like a throwback to Centro’s early days of local news ad buying, but we’re not just talking about sports-section takeovers anymore. Contextual 2.0 offers a host of machine learning solutions for discerning page sentiment—these solutions recognize images and dynamically insert creative alongside appropriate subject matter.
With the adoption of improved alignment technology, a contextual-first strategy could be a cost saver and performance driver, not just Plan B. Past studies have already suggested that contextually relevant advertising can improve ROI by 30%, compared to cookie-based targeting.
Plus, one of the most compelling use-cases for advanced contextual targeting is video!
Brands invest heavily in crafting video to evoke a specific emotional response among an audience in a specific mindset. Poor video placement (below-the-fold, in-banner video, anyone?) can undermine this desired effect, and at high CPM’s, waste your ad spend entirely.
Precise contextual alignment, with user-friendly ad formats, presents an opportunity for video ads to be more topical, viewable, and delivered to a receptive audience—all benefits that make this strategy arguably more valuable than user targeting.
Next steps:
As traditional retailers struggle just to survive 2020, the shift to e-commerce has accelerated dramatically. Social platforms are seizing on the opportunity.
If you’ve spent time on Facebook or Instagram recently, you’ve probably noticed how easy it is to make an impulse purchase through well optimized shopper ads (guilty!). And, to simplify the process even more, Facebook introduced Shops in May, allowing brands to sell products directly through its platforms.
And then there’s the Gen Z favorite, TikTok. TikTok’s growth has been explosive, with an addictive interface that drives massive numbers of views. To understand its long-term potential, take a look at how its parent company is approaching e-commerce, and how e-commerce and social video companies are collaborating in China.
TikTok and Shopify just announced a partnership that cements e-commerce as the real game plan. Not only will purchases from Shopify merchants be easier through TikTok, businesses will have access to TikTok’s ad platform directly through Shopify–something in-house marketing teams should be aware of. With its video-first, early adopters from Gen Z (a population that controls a growing $140 billion of spending power), TikTok is in a position to fundamentally change how people shop.
So with social media giants transforming into digital malls (and potentially making a run at Amazon), what does this mean for advertisers?
First, marketers can now use video to speak directly to consumers at the digital point of sale. With an audience that’s literally one click from conversion, brands should be developing a new class of video assets tailored to the actively engaged shopper.
To move the needle from impulse to purchase, consider an immersive, educational approach, including AR/VR and other interactive tools, as well as authentic testimonials or product demos.
Second, the shopification of social media increases the value of influencer- and fan-generated content exponentially. If Douyin (TikTok’s Chinese counterpart) is any indication, in-video search is on the horizon and will allow users to purchase products simply by tapping them in a video.
With every view representing an organic shopping opportunity, imagine the impact of your product appearing in tomorrow’s viral sensation. If content and influencer marketing haven’t been a priority in the past, now may be a good time to determine if they’re a fit for your brand.
Next Steps:
Learn more about video advertising with Centro.
Every year, Centro hosts a wellness event called Wellnesspalloza. Wellnesspalooza is centered around free health screenings for all employees, as well as their eligible spouses. Centro sets a goal of 100% participation for all employees.
These screenings run over 30 tests, ranging from anemia, infections, and certain cancers to heart disease and stroke. Additionally, employees and their spouses can use their screening results to discuss with their doctors, assess their year-over-year health, and work towards being the healthiest version of themselves.
Each year these wellness screenings are complemented by a week of events promoting many aspects of wellness, including mental, physical, and financial health. These events have included cycling classes, cooking classes, on site manicures, massages, financial webinars, etc.
Every year the events change based on the needs of our employees, but the goal every fall is to provide an opportunity for employees to step away from their daily work and focus on themselves. It’s a time for employees to come together, have fun, and learn more about their health.
Even though all Centro employees remain working from home this year, we knew we still needed to offer this opportunity for our people. All events took place over two weeks, were hosted 100% virtually, and allowed for friends, family, and roommates to join in the fun and learning.
Employees volunteered to teach classes around fitness, cooking, and card crafting. External vendors and partners provided expert knowledge around 401k, RRSP, meditation, home buying, saving for the future, etc. The virtual setting still provided all employees and their families the opportunity to join in and learn something new to better themselves during a stressful time for many.
Apart from Wellnesspalooza, Centro strives to offer the best benefits to employees year-round. Centro’s health insurance plan for employees and their families includes medical, dental, vision, and preventative healthcare. All employees receive Headspace memberships, free and confidential access to our Employee Assistance Program, Rocket Lawyer legal services, student debt contributions, and more.
By offering these programs and initiatives, Centro follows through on our commitment to putting our people first, no matter what.
Learn more about life at Centro!
Retargeting need not be merely a tactic for B2C companies to reach consumers. Done right, it can be an incredibly effective way to reach future clients, as long as you combine the right retargeting tactics with strong and tailored messaging.
To illustrate the effectiveness of B2B retargeting, I want to call attention to a case study on an insurance client of Centro’s. What this example illustrates is that if you know your audience, pay close attention to the right benchmarks, and are willing to test a number of approaches, retargeting can work very well in a B2B context.
Overview
For this insurance company, Centro ran a two-month campaign whose initial objective was to target small business owners and decision-makers interested in purchasing small business insurance. The primary objective was to increase applications and, in turn, boost its lead generation effort, while recognizing a positive ROI.
We had a few challenges to address out of the gate. First, the client historically had seen a fairly long pathway to conversion, including a large number of site visitors who would start, but not complete, the application for insurance. They held us to a relatively challenging CPA benchmark. Since this was the very first Centro campaign for the client, we had no historical data to use in for campaign optimization.
Strategy
Setting up the insurance company’s first campaign with Centro meant we were to build a user pool to increase the scale we’d get with retargeting small business owners. We also tested multiple data and content partners right out of the gate to improve efficiency, gain insights and increase scale. Specific campaign approaches included:
Results
Due to Centro DSP’s multiple integrations with data and content providers, and its ability to create tiered retargeting through advanced pixeling strategies, we were able to target application starters more aggressively to come in at about one-half the client's cost-per-action goal, with strong overall numbers.
As a result, the insurance company expanded its retargeting efforts considerably, extending into multiple, specific small business industry campaigns and testing a variety of messages against each audience.
Learn more about retargeting with Centro.
Driving quality customer engagement is now more important for marketers than ever before. Effective engagement helps to better nurture leads through the funnel and consequently drive increased conversions, retention, customer lifetime value, and more. A massive 54% of consumers, however, say that companies need to fundamentally transform how they engage. There’s much lacking in modern consumer engagement tactics, and creating a single source of truth is an important key to changing this.
A single source of truth (SSOT) was a term first coined for use in information systems design, yet it’s just as relevant to a number of different fields today, including marketing. By definition, a SSOT means keeping your data in a single location and managing it from there. Employing one centralized location for data management makes it easier to analyze channel performance, create accurate reports, and make informed decisions.
Large brands that have branches and teams located in different places benefit considerably from having a SSOT, which allows them to access and use the same data profile regardless of where they are. Now that marketing is becoming increasingly multifaceted and complex, maintaining a SSOT is essential for businesses of every size, particularly when it comes to tracking engagement.
Key changes in the marketing and business landscape in recent years are the driving force that make a SSOT so important today. Here’s why:
The number of valuable marketing channels continues to grow, and so, therefore, does the amount of business data that comes with them. Consider online channels like social media platforms, websites, online ads, email, as well as offline channels like in-store interactions, call centers, text messages, TV and print advertising, etc. Businesses need to track such metrics as impressions, engagement, and conversions across each channel to stay on top of their marketing strategy.
The more channels there are, the more tools you need to manage them. Each tool has its own analytical features to help brands track their performance. That makes it very challenging to get a full picture of your marketing efforts as a whole. How can you determine how different audience touchpoints across channels work together to drive a sale?
Today, marketing data is so numerous and disparate that marketing teams simply can’t manage it manually. Few have the expertise to aggregate all data, assess its quality, and analyze it effectively. Even enlisting a full-time data manager isn’t enough to keep up with the ongoing stream of highly relevant engagement data available.
Establishing a single source of truth is a challenge for modern marketers. Once implemented, though, a SSOT offers so many benefits that it becomes difficult to envision how you once worked without it.
When managing your marketing engagement data using a number of different platforms, it is difficult to ensure each source delivers accurate and updated data. Each platform may track different data sources. Some may update in real-time while others pull data that is hours or days old.
When you aggregate and validate data in a single source, you can ensure uniformity with regards to how and when your reports are updated, improving data quality and analysis in the process. This, in turn, helps marketers increase their confidence in data analysis conclusions.
Introducing a single source of truth into your marketing set-up makes it possible to fill gaps in your understanding of the customer journey. Analyzing social media engagement, email engagement, website engagement, and offline interactions in isolation tells you very little about how these channels work together to influence purchasing decisions. With unified data, you get the full context pertaining to how different audience touchpoints influence consumers’ decision-making.
Marketing and sales teams can then take advantage of these new insights to create content that is more relevant and timely for their audience. They can also use cross-channel marketing with confidence. In a recent report conducted by Omnisend, it was found that purchase and engagement rates are 250% higher for marketers that use three or more channels. If you’re not investing in cross-channel marketing, you’re undoubtedly falling behind.
Each social media platform and monitoring tool has different ways to measure audience interactions. This creates challenges in effectively conducting any form of comparative analysis. And, to make it even more complex, these independent platforms also use the same terms to categorize data that is inherently unalike. A great example of this issue is social media impressions. Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram all define impressions their own way. Facebook impressions count the number of times an ad appears on a screen. Twitter counts an impression whenever a user sees a tweet. Third-party analytics tools can categorize them in other ways also.
Using a single provider to report these metrics makes it much easier to understand the difference between data types and see their relative impact accordingly. Considering how engagement performance metrics vary across social platforms as well as how they’re defined in the first place offers much more accurate and valuable insights.
There is a plethora of performance data relevant to various teams within an organization. Creating a single source of truth for all relevant data helps teams to derive new insights that they wouldn’t have otherwise. For example, factors related to PR efforts or customer service could impact marketing engagement. Once all teams understand how their efforts are interconnected, this encourages more cross-team collaboration. Empowering everyone with access to the same information helps them understand what impacts various business divisions and how to optimize collaboration efforts.
Exposing insights into the customer journey not only helps marketers deliver a relevant marketing message, but it also helps you serve your customers better. When sales, marketing, and customer service teams all have access to the same engagement data, it’s easier to identify what factors drive upsells, cross-sells, and churn. You can then adapt your overall strategy to fix any standing issues and optimize efforts that turn people into repeat customers. Having a complete picture of audience engagement data also makes it easier to segment and offer them a personalized customer experience, catered to their unique interests and needs.
This optimization can drive more revenue as well. In fact, 86% of buyers are willing to pay more for products when there’s better customer experience:
Creating a SSOT for engagement data makes it possible to analyze and learn exactly what kind of marketing message helps turn leads into paying customers. Having all your engagement data in one place helps you fill in gaps in the customer journey, especially with cross-channel interactions. For example, using the right marketing intelligence platform, it’s possible to see how leads discovered through Google search converted into paying customers through a Facebook ad.
Using insights like these to optimize your cross-channel marketing investment, deliver a more relevant message, and improve customer service overall can help drive your bottom line significantly. Creating a single source of truth will require a financial investment in terms of software technology, but it’s always worth the ROI it brings.
Once you understand what establishing a SSOT really means for your business, you need to set up an effective system to make it happen. With the amount of relevant business data out there, this is no simple task when done manually. You have to collect data from each marketing channel, unify it into a single system, store it, and analyze it. You also need to be able to update your data feeds quickly to keep up with the latest insights.
All these things considered, investing in marketing analytics software is the best way to move forward. Rather than just adding another tool to your arsenal, the right software can serve to replace tools you already use for storing and analyzing data from different marketing channels.
There are many options out there for marketing analytics software. Here are some factors to consider to help you choose the right option for your needs:
Most importantly, you need a tool that can collect data from all relevant sources. There are many tools that can pull together all your social media and advertising engagement data. However, you likely have other data that is relevant to your business, such as call center interactions, offline revenue data, or historical performance data.
How often does your analytics tool pull data? Weekly, daily, hourly, etc? Having up-to-date engagement data is incredibly valuable, especially if you’re investing in PPC advertising.
Make sure your software has all the features you need to analyze your engagement data the way you want to. Some solutions can create customized metrics based on what’s most important to your business. Make sure your solution also provides access to historical performance so you can use these insights to optimize future campaigns.
Best-in-class marketing analytics tools provide AI-driven automation features to help you get the most out of your data insights. Automating analytics reports is one example of this. Before investing in a tool, make sure it has the automation capabilities you need to maximize the value of having a single source of truth.
Most marketing analytics software solutions are self-service tools. However, some businesses may want and need guidance from professionals about how to maximize the value of their data insights. In that case, consider investing in a software solution that offers additional agency services to help you with your strategy.
The vast majority of marketers today work with disparate tools to analyze campaign performance. In the future, creating a single source of truth will become the standard for any organization that wants to invest in cross-channel marketing. The technology needed to create a centralized location for their data is already readily available and marketers that prioritize implementing it now will set themselves up to benefit the most in the long-term.
Centro’s Candidates and Causes team has been at the forefront of political advertising in digital media since 2006. In our Election Advertising 2020 series, they share insights for advertisers ahead of the U.S. 2020 General Election.
Programmatic
Centro forecasts the impact of election ad spending on programmatic demand primarily in the final five to six weeks leading up to the election. Rates are expected to increase by 15-20% or more during this timeframe, particularly for video inventory and in key battleground states.
Social
With many social platforms restricting or limiting political advertisers, increased demand and rates will be most seen on Facebook’s family of apps (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger) due to the large scale, targeting capabilities, and overall performance.
Search
Google prohibits political advertisers from targeting voters outside of geography, age, gender, and contextual alignments across search, display, and YouTube.
Despite these regulations, we don’t expect to see a decrease in ad spend within the Google Properties based on the high visibility of these platforms. Due to the specificity of keywords that can be applied within paid search, the increased traffic should not affect rates for advertisers outside of the political sphere.
Site Direct
Site direct investment has been decreasing steadily since 2012, largely due to programmatic technology and the availability of high-quality targeting at scale. Despite this, there are site direct partners that have seen significant ad dollars for political messaging.
Hulu, for example, was a standout partner for Centro in 2018 and is expected to be a big player this fall. Local advertisers should anticipate inventory constraints in these final two months across key battleground states. National advertisers are unlikely to see much impact given the scale of these platforms (Hulu, Pandora, YouTube, etc.)
Video is the preferred format for political messaging, due to its storytelling ability. TV will continue to have the bulk share of ad spend in 2020, with broadcast networks and cable TV expected to account for 53% and 17% of total political ad spend, respectively1. Online video is expected to be the primary format within digital, with connected TV spend expected to be as high as $720 million in 20203.
According to a recent Nielsen study, while traditional TV usage is beginning to normalize post-shelter-in-place restrictions, connected TV usage remains above pre-COVID-19 levels. It’s estimated that approximately 40% of ‘persuadable’ voters do not subscribe to traditional TV services5, further illustrating the power CTV will have in reaching voters during this final stretch of campaigning.
Whether through direct partnerships (i.e. Hulu, Roku) or programmatically in the open exchange and private marketplace deals, non-political advertisers running in battleground states or key congressional districts should expect to feel increased competition and demand. Centro recommends padding desktop and mobile video rates by 10-15% and further cushioning CTV by 15-25%.
Read Part 1 and Part 2 of our Election Advertising 2020 series to learn more about how this election season will impact advertisers.
Learn more about Video Advertising with Centro.
Driving online purchases is typically a high priority for mobile advertisers with e-commerce sites. There are many tactics available to help reach and engage online audiences and guide them to your website. Depending on your industry, brand, or product, it can also make sense for some brands to incorporate mobile advertising that will bring foot traffic into your physical store, as well.
Even in the digital age, the majority of purchases are still made in a physical store. According to Statista, if the migration toward e-commerce continues in line with current trends, only 14% of purchases will be made online in 2021.
For larger purchases, the majority of consumers do some research online before making an in-store purchase. This allows for efficient shopping, and also for any remaining questions to be answered by a subject matter expert. If a potential customer is shopping between several different brands, a conversation with an in-store representative can increase the odds that you will win the sale.
Bringing consumers from their mobile phone and into a physical location is an opportunity for staff to help to create a positive experience that promotes brand loyalty. Having a second touchpoint can help to solidify a brand in the user’s mind as the go-to source for a product or product category.
Centro’s Basis makes it easy for any mobile advertiser to partner with vendors who specialize in driving and measuring in-store traffic.
Learn more about mobile advertising with Centro here.
Centro’s Candidates and Causes team has been at the forefront of political advertising in digital media since 2006. In our Election Advertising 2020 series, they share insights for advertisers ahead of the U.S. 2020 General Election.
As discussed in part one of our Election Advertising series, this election season will be anything but normal. Overall, political spending will be focused on the upcoming debates, the start of early voting, and finally, Election Day.
Read on to learn how advertisers can leverage the most important dates counting down to November 3rd.
A series of Presidential debates will begin on September 29th in Cleveland. Additionally, 23 states plan to begin mailing ballots 45 days before the election (September 19th). These states include:
Arkansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Alabama, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia and Wyoming*
*Bolded state names signify swing states
Implications: With voters officially receiving ballots this month, advertisers should expect to see an impact on rates in the key states listed above. Overall, and outside of early voting states, political spending will progressively ramp up throughout the month, with higher spending across channels—connected TV in particular.
Geographies: While the most notable impact will be felt in battleground (or swing) states, earlier impacts may be seen in any of the 23 states listed above.
October will be a key period, with two Presidential debates scheduled for October 15th and 22nd. Mail-in voting and in-person absentee voting will also start across the majority of states.
Implications: With the projected uptick in early voting, no longer will demand spike in just the final few weeks of the cycle. Instead, noticeable rate pressure is expected begin in October across much of the country. For those states that do not offer early or absentee voting, expect spending to spike in the final 2-3 weeks before Election Day. Centro recommends planning for a 15-20% increase in traffic across channels.
Geographies: Impact will be felt nationally, but particularly in swing states.
Check out part one of our Election Advertising 2020 series to get an overview of the advertising landscape. Happy bidding!
Writing an effective audio ad is challenging because writing for the ear to listen is different than writing for the eyes to see. A person cannot stop and re-read what was just said to them, so the opportunity to lose the listener is far higher within an audio advertisement. However, that does not mean it isn’t possible to have effective streaming audio advertising that captures the listener’s attention and pulls them into your message. Read our top five tips for effective audio advertising, below:
The longer your message, the more airtime you need to speak it. The average attention span of the average adult America is somewhere between 8-15 seconds—the goal is to capture the listener within those first few seconds. A good rule of thumb is to keep sentences under 25 words each.
A strong CTA is key—ideally, it should be repeated within the script at least two times. An example of a good CTA has a clear and direct action that the listener can immediately take. If the intention is for the listener to come into a store, make sure those exact words are said within the CTA.
Sometimes it is not what you’re saying, but how you’re saying it— one study found a connection between audio advertising and the features of phonoaesthetic function (vocal pitch, timbre, intensity, etc.). Voice is a crucial component of an audio advertisement because there is often no image alongside it to capture the listener’s attention. Read the script out loud a few times to see how things sound!
Play with inserting short pauses after each sentence—these allow the listener time to digest the first thought, before jumping into the next. Frequent pauses also make it easier to edit the audio file later.
Consider words that sound alike or similar and pay attention to context. Remember, listeners cannot see the words you’re saying—watch out for words like “two” and “too” because this can sometimes be confusing to the listener. Also think about the way people talk in everyday conversation and avoid formal structuring (i.e., that of a formal written paper)—keep it conversational!
Ready to learn more? Check out the audio advertising opportunity with Centro, here.