Sojern has published the second edition of its report, "The Future of Travel Advertising: 2020 State of the Industry Report." Sojern surveyed more than 1,100 global travel marketers across 26 countries who shared key challenges marketers face, how they overcame them and their strategies for the coming year.
The 2020 report highlights the impact of emerging trends and technologies on the future of travel advertising and covers a cross-section of topics including budget allocation, investments in digital video and personalization, technology adoption, media channel effectiveness and what the future looks like for travel marketers.
“We pore over travel marketing minutiae daily and our customers know that,” VP of Marketing Jackie Lamping said in a statement. “We work with travel marketers from around the globe and they always ask us, ‘What should we be doing to stay ahead of our competitors? How do we get ahead?’ This report is intended to answer those questions by providing benchmarking data and key learnings from other brands across the industry about how they allocate budget and stay ahead of evolving trends.”
Key findings of travel marketers surveyed include:
Smart Marketing
Today’s travel marketers are adjusting their strategies to reach always-on, always-searching travelers—finding new ways to activate the data available to present the most relevant offer at the right time. Almost half (47 percent) of travel marketers maintain a continuous digital presence in order to capture the always searching and booking traveler.
The top benefit of an always-on marketing strategy is the ability to continuously test, learn and more accurately optimize their digital marketing (43 percent). It is fundamental to developing a data-driven approach because marketers won’t miss a moment (39 percent) and can see an ongoing view of performance (39 percent).
CTV
More than one-third of travel marketers (38 percent) plan on investing in connected TV in 2020. Thirty-six percent plan to invest more on CTV in the next five years. The motivation to shift budget to CTV is largely influenced because marketers can target viewers across multiple streaming devices, apps or channels (56 percent).
Programmatic Advertising In-House
With growing privacy concerns and new regulations, 48 percent of large advertisers (those with an annual budget of $1 million or more) are looking to bring programmatic advertising in-house and 34 percent already have in-house capabilities. This is a direct result of marketers wanting more control over their data (51 percent), improved return on investment (46 percent), and the ability to react to campaign insights faster (44 percent). However, securing the necessary buy-in and budget, becoming experts in the data and hiring the right talent all remains a challenge.