gital and Travolution, focused on mobile and online marketing. LEE HAYHURST reports
‘Don’t build your own app – get on someone else’s’
Travel firms ought to be considering how they can piggyback on popular multi- purpose mobile apps as they face the challenge and cost of marketing their own.
Travelzoo’s Richard Singer said
that in China the firm was focusing its development resources on working with WeChat, a widely used generic app. “You can market your own
app, but it’s so expensive and personal to get it on to people’s phones,” said Singer. “You have to think about how you can build partnerships, how you can get in someone else’s app.” In August, Travelzoo reacquired
its Asia Pacific business – covering Australia, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan and southeast Asia – that had been independently run by Azzurro Capital. Singer, the deals publisher’s managing director for Europe, said the Chinese use WeChat for everything, from communicating with family and friends and paying bills to ordering taxis, online banking or seeking travel and leisure recommendations. “Everyone is doing everything
through this particular portal,” he said. “People are frustrated with having to move from app to app;
RICHARD SINGER: ‘Marketing your own app is so expensive’
everything has to be within the one app.” Singer said the shift to
mobile had changed the core of Travelzoo’s business. Mobile is driving 60% of the firm’s traffic today and sees a deal sold every one-and-a-half minutes. Travelzoo has quadrupled its
development team to support mobile and to ensure the firm continues to be successful across all channels. Singer said the mobile approach
was no longer simply about offering a stripped down version of the desktop site. “We have had to take ownership
of this whole process,” he added. “We are seeing more and more
“You have to think about how you can build partnerships, how you can get in someone else’s app”
people searching on our site. “If we had no deals we would be
surfacing nothing. “This poses some challenges.
One is user experience, the other is depth of content. “We need partnerships in place to have that depth of content.”
‘Make site ads more relevant’
Travel companies should be striving to serve fewer online ads, while ensuring those that are delivered are more relevant. Aaron Ritoper of Sojern said:
“We are using new-generation technology to extract economic value from vast quantities of data. “This is really about serving
less ads but more relevant ads to the right people. We are making certain traditional marketing techniques obsolete.” Ritoper, Sojern’s strategic partnerships director for the EMEA and APAC regions, said old-fashioned segment marketing means it is impossible to distinguish between people who look the same based on traditional demographics but in fact behave very differently. “The problem is if you drive
ads based on demographic segmentation you are going to miss [the different ways in which] people buy travel and what we are each interested in,” he said. “If you look at individual behaviour you can serve much more focused, relevant and smart advertising.” Ritoper added: “You begin to
have some basis to plan more- effective spend on marketing. That becomes extremely powerful and flexible, and offers a number of opportunities to reach people.”
Ad-blocking software ‘will force advertisers to be smarter’
The rise of advertising blocking technology, particularly on mobile, will force firms to develop more-relevant and less-intrusive campaigns. It is estimated that 90% of global profit made
through retailing on mobile comes through Apple devices, but the technology giant is increasingly allowing users to block ads. Apple’s latest release of its iOS9 operating
system supported ad blocking for its Safari web browser and saw ad blocker apps shoot to the top of rankings in the App Store. Aaron Ritoper, Sojern’s strategic partnerships
director for the EMEA and APAC regions, said: “It’s a broad industry question; the whole economy of the internet is based on advertising. “There will be solutions because all the
economic models rely on funding these services that everyone’s using through advertising. “It’s more about respecting the consumer and
providing messages that they need to see in the right context. We are going to get smarter about how we deliver ads so they are not as annoying. We are still learning about the formats to make this non-intrusive for consumers.”
15 October 2015
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