One of the world’s most-visited air travel sites and travel advertising platforms- Skyscanner has now launched its proprietary Skyscanner Ads Platform to help its advertising partners grow their business by connecting them with millions of people around the world.
Being at the forefront of travel and technology for over two decades now, this reflects the company’s continued lead in innovative travel ad tech.
According to a company blogpost penned down by Prabh Walia, Head, Product Marketing, Skyscanner, Skyscanner Ads Platform combines the company’s first-party data and popular ads suite with an advanced Ads server and a new Ads manager which allows its partners to use how they wish– to help them reach travel audiences with targeted ads in a privacy-centric way.
Drive growth in a changing digital ads ecosystem
In times when privacy is becoming a consistent concern for audiences across the strata, this development marks a significant shift that impacts all areas of advertising.
“Many major ad platforms and advertisers will have less granular data about their audiences, making it more challenging to identify in-market consumers, reach them in a targeted way and accurately measure and attribute advertising impact. For travel advertisers, it means finding and selling to people interested in travel is becoming trickier,” the company stated in its blogpost.
In the same, it also pointed out that Skyscanner’s ads offering has made the company a global leader in travel advertising for years and hence, the launch of Skyscanner Ads Platform continues its commitment to being a trusted strategic advisor to its partners.
“Our popular suite of native ads on Skyscanner. An advanced proprietary ads server that uses machine learning to deliver the right ads to the right travellers at the right time, ensuring you get the best results. Skyscanner Ads Manager, a strategic tool to help you plan and manage campaigns, see performance trends, and discover market insights and growth opportunities. Exclusive first-party data from 110m+ global users who visit Skyscanner every month. Reach in-market travellers in a privacy-centric way. Skyscanner Ads Platform brings together clever tools, first-party data and a suite of native ads to help you reach in-market travellers with targeted messages,” the company elaborated.
According to Skyscanner, its new ad platform can be used by partners for the following ways:
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Finding high-intent and in-market audiences interested in travel
Privacy changes have impacted how many ad platforms and advertisers build user profiles and identify in-market consumers, affecting ad performance in a significant way. Since Skyscanner has the world’s largest air traffic audience, advertisers can find in-market audiences most relevant to them and drive maximum performance.
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Reach them with targeted ads in a privacy-centric way
Amid growing global regulatory focus on consent and tracking practices, it’s becoming harder to reach relevant audiences using targeted ads, reducing the consumer pool even further. Major ad platforms, traditionally reliant on these cookies and other technologies to serve targeted ads, are grappling with the effects of these privacy changes.
Skyscanner’s first-party ecosystem allows ad partners to serve native ads contextually, based on how people are using Skyscanner to explore – without needing to rely on third-party cookies or similar tracking technology, thereby helping them reach relevant audiences with targeted ads in a privacy-centric manner.
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Understand user journeys, optimise performance
As it becomes more difficult for advertisers to get detailed, granular data on their audiences, so does mapping end-to-end consumer journeys and accurately attributing conversions. As a result, Skyscanner Ads Platform enables one to reliably share and link their conversion data with its first-party data to understand customer journeys through Skyscanner, optimise their ad campaigns and improve return on spend.
Furthermore, the company also highlighted that advertisers using Skyscanner Ads Platform will be able to carry out the following functions:
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Manage campaigns with ease, whatever the goals
Skyscanner Ads Manager has the flexibility to work for ‘you’- it can be used for creating campaigns from scratch and allow one to edit them all in one place, or simply use it to stay on top of the things that matter the most to- like seeing the overall performance of the campaigns and knowing what’s working and what should change.
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Discover actionable consumer insights to make smarter advertising decisions
Many advertisers rely solely on internal data and ad performance metrics to inform their ad strategies. With Skyscanner Ads Manager, a key component of Skyscanner Ads Platform, the advertiser will be able to get all the data insights one needs to sharpen their ad strategy, including:
- Understand travellers with insights into their motivations, preferences and search behaviour, powered by our exclusive first-party data.
- Use historical search and booking data to predict travel trends, so one can respond better to evolving markets and traveller demands.
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Get recommendations for new growth opportunities
With Skyscanner working alongside partners to develop products that suit their needs, the company realised that many partners spend a lot of time gathering and interpreting data which is often infrequent and outdated. And coupled with too little time, this prevents teams from confidently making decisions about budget allocation, targeting and optimisation.
Having discovered this untapped opportunity, Skyscanner now brings together its advertising data with the latest insights on developing market trends, to give partners actionable recommendations to help them overcome challenges and drive growth, all while saving them time.
The new ads recommendations tool that helps one:
- Uncover untapped opportunities and hidden potential across different routes, cities and countries, so one can strategically allocate the brand’s budget and maximise advertising impact.
- Understand the share of voice of one’s ads, direct bookings and more, while identifying areas of opportunity, helping one strategise, compete and accelerate growth.
The same will start rolling out to select partners beginning Q1 next year.
“Partnering with Skyscanner has transformed our ads strategy. Their innovative products, highly collaborative approach and deep audience insights drive exceptional engagement and measurable results. Access to high quality first party data is becoming increasingly important and Skyscanner’s ability to harness this data sets them apart in the advertising world,” remarked Kyle Nimmo, Head of Media Investment, easyJet.
