The Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins with a Single Step: iPinYou Connects International Brands with Chinese Tourists

SEATTLE, Oct. 11, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- As an emerging power in the global travel market, China has become the largest supplier of outbound tourists in the world (The Telegraph), with 135 million outbound tourists last year (United Nations World Tourism Organization) and over 100 million cross-border trips within the first nine months (Forbes).  Chinese tourists set a new world record by spending $261 billion on outbound travel in 2016 (UNWTO). The Japanese even created the term"Bakugai" for this pronounced phenomenon, meaning "explosive buying by Chinese tourists. "While China represents the world's largest number of outbound visitors, it is also a highly competitive and fragmented market. To help multinational travel brands overcome marketing challenges in China, the leading programmatic advertising company, iPinYou, is delighted to share the following insights based on years of extensive marketing experience in the travel industry.

Enhance Location Based Services (LBS) Targeting with Footprint Tracking Technology

By leveraging Location Based Services (LBS) to target potential customers' mobile devices within specific geographic areas, advertisers can significantly improve campaign performance. StudentUniverse, the leading travel booking site for students, partnered with iPinYou to employ this technology to boost bookings among Chinese college students. The advertiser used LBS to target students in specific college areas. To further enhance the effectiveness of LBS targeting, footprint tracking technology enabled StudentUniverse to retarget students who appeared frequently in the LBS-targeted areas even if they were not present there currently. The integration of LBS and footprint tracking together enabled maximum reach across all of StudentUniverse's potential customers. The campaign achieved outstanding performance with the average CTR of 0.84%, (twice the CTR of the average mobile campaign).

Audience Taxonomy and Tailored Creatives

Programmatic advertising gives marketers the ability to segment target audiences into sub-categories through profiling technology. In a campaign for IHG, iPinYou analyzed keyword search data, and generated consumer personas to categorize them into more precisely defined groups: vacationers, frequent travelers, and families. To appeal to these different target audiences for each of IHG's sub-brands, the audience labeling system intelligently selected and presented customized messages to specific demographic profiles. For example, consumers who searched "ski" were exposed to ad for hotels providing skiing experiences, whereas consumers who intended to take business trips were served ads for business hotels.

1st Party Data Integration

Programmatic campaign data does not only come from 3rd party sources, but can also be obtained from 1st party sources. For a global hotel chain's campaign, iPinYou integrated 3rd party data with the client's 1st party data to further identify target audiences and maximize campaign ROI. Overall, by combining 1st party data, audience segmentation and media targeting, iPinYou was able to outperform the client's expected campaign ROI by 50%.

With extensive experiences in the travel industry, iPinYou helps travel agencies, airlines, hotels, and entertainment venues expand their businesses in China. This year, iPinYou was invited to the upcoming EyeforTravel Conference in Las Vegas, and would like to extend their warm welcome to join the panel talk on October 20th at 2:40 pm.

References:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/12028797/Explosive-buying-by-Chinese-tourists-is-Japans-word-of-the-year.html

http://www.tourism-review.com/chinese-tourists-represent-important-purchasing-power-news4265

https://www.forbes.com/sites/profdrwolfganggarlt/2016/11/21/for-the-first-time-chinese-outbound-trips-cross-100-million-in-nine-months/#45cadbb94eec

For more information, email: [email protected] or call: 425-406-8630

SOURCE iPinYou