Travel business?
3 must-use ad formats!

Summer is on its way and that means holidays! For hotel and hospitality businesses, airlines, tour guides and others, this is a crucial time of year to put a good dent in the yearly revenue objective!

Facebook and other social networks have some innovative ad formats available to travel advertisers. Facebook, specifically, has identified the unique advertising needs of businesses in the travel industry, and has launched some brilliant ad formats and optimization options that every travel business should be aware of.

From the day someone starts dreaming about their next holiday, to when they return with stories to share with their friends, Facebook helps travel advertisers communicate with the right people at the right time.

1. Dynamic Ads for Travel

Integrated directly with your product catalogue, dynamic ads for travel is a powerful, automated ad format designed specifically for travel advertisers. Especially powerful for retargeting, this ad format lets you automatically show ads across Facebook, Instagram and the Audience Network to people who are likely to take a trip. If someone was browsing a room at your hotel but didn’t make a reservation, for example, dynamic ads for travel will allow you to target them with relevant ads based on their specific dates, destinations and other trip details.

To run dynamic ads for travel in your Facebook campaigns you’ll need to follow these three steps:

Implement the Facebook pixel

The Facebook pixel will provide visibility on how often your inventory is viewed or booked on your site. Facebook SDK and app events will do the same thing for your mobile app. For more information on how to install the Facebook Pixel and use it correctly, check out our complete guide.

Upload your travel catalogue

A travel catalogue contains a list of products and other product information, such as location, price and availability, that will be included in your ads.

Create a template for your ads

You can create an ad template that will dynamically insert images and details from your catalogue to match your audience’s travel intent. Choose from the likes of Collection and Carousel ads, and combine easily ‘navigate-able’ structure with powerful automation and retargeting capability.

In our success story, discover how the Portuguese airline, TAP, reduced CPP by 50% and sold 5 times more flights than the average month, using dynamic ads for travel and the Paragone platform.

2. Canvas Ads

The Canvas ad format, on both Facebook and Instagram, can be a great way to immerse users in your brand story and transport them to a place of their dreams. Not many things capture the imagination better than travel, so Canvas could the ad format you’ve been looking for!

Canvas is an instantly loading, mobile-optimized experience designed to capture the complete attention of your audience. With Facebook Canvas, people can watch engaging videos and photos, swipe through carousels, tilt to pan, and explore lifestyle images with tagged products. They won’t just see your travel, destination or hospitality story – they’ll become part of it.

3. Stories Ads

Instagram Stories is a great way for travel businesses big and small to tap into people’s passions and inspire them to take action. 300 million Instagram users now use Stories, and one-third of the most viewed stories are from business accounts.  Added to that, one in five stories results a direct message from its viewers, so it’s an amazing way to drive engagement from your audience.

Stories are a great way to inspire users, and advertisers now have a bunch of options to get the most out of this ad format. Here are just a couple:

Instagram Stories Carousel

Instagram has brought the Carousel ad format to Stories! While still in beta, the new ad format allows advertisers to have up to three pieces of media per Stories ad, whereas before, just one was possible. This allows advertisers to reach new audiences while telling a sequential story across three images or videos. Learn more about how our client Vans doubled their swipe-up rate with Instagram Stories Carousel.

Facebook Stories

Ads are coming to Facebook Stories too, and advertisers can easily re-use their ads from Instagram Stories, or simply repurpose New Feed ads with new colors and copy. While ads in Facebook Stories don’t include CTAs yet, this should be on the way. Overall, it’s another place for you to reach your audience, with 150 million daily active users today.

Any analysis of Facebook’s advertising options for travel businesses wouldn’t be complete without a mention of Trip Consideration. This new ads solution helps expand the reach of travel advertisers and enables them to deliver static ad creative to people with travel intent. Advertisers can provide a specific creative to display, and Facebook will optimize ad delivery to people who expressed interest in travel, but have not yet selected a destination.

With the launch of Trip Consideration back in March 2018, Facebook is now able to offer a full-funnel solution for travel advertisers, with Trip Consideration filling the upper funnel awareness stage and dynamic ads for travel driving consideration and purchase through the middle and lower funnel.