Commentary

Travel Data Holds Blueprints For Perfect FBX Campaigns

Back in January, the question of whether or not Facebook's Facebook Exchange (FBX) would truly be a game changer was raised. We asked: would it threaten Google? In March, Newsday wrote that Facebook and the FBX had their targets locked on Google. In April, FBX ads made their way on to the news feed.

Long story short: FBX hasn't gone away, and it's only getting bigger and better. Just today, Adara, a big data company focused on targeting traveler audiences, announced that it now participates on FBX.

The company claims to receive "real-time search and booking data directly from 45 of the world's leading airlines, hotel and travel distribution companies." With that kind of data to work with, users could start to see very relevant advertisements popping up all over Facebook.

But it also got me thinking that travel advertisers make perfect sense as the ultimate FBX-ers. Think about it for a second. Big, beautiful pictures of the destination, a social atmosphere to talk about upcoming trips, something that people truly plan and get excited for, and individuals prepared to spend lots of money. What's missing?

Does a company like Adara hold the blueprints for the perfect FBX campaign? Can they get the right mix of people that have looked at a certain destination, a mix of people that have booked it, a mix of people that have already been, and get all of them talking about it? That doesn't just seem great for the advertisers, it seems great for the consumers too.

Proper retargeting, to me, only seems like half of the potential on FBX. The rest of the potential revolves around getting people to talk -- in real-time.

1 comment about "Travel Data Holds Blueprints For Perfect FBX Campaigns".
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  1. Chris Zaharias from Campanja, June 25, 2013 at 5:51 p.m.

    Travel advertisers haven't exactly been sitting on the sidelines. The world's biggest travel booking site is also the world's biggest FBX advertiser, and dozens of OTAs, airlines, hotel chains and rental car companies are actively retargeting on Facebook.

    Likewise, if you look hard you'll see some FBX partners & travel advertisers are already augmenting 1st party cookie data with other sources of travel intent.

    Knowing who to target in travel on Facebook is only half the battle. As these two slides show, there's an order of magnitude difference in efficiency between static and dynamic FBX travel ads:

    http://bit.ly/14qel98

    Adara's gonna find that running dynamic FBX travel ads at Facebook scale isn't easy, but it is necessary.

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