In cooperation with Student Agency, we launched a dynamic remarketing campaign for flight tickets at the end of 2017, as well as a Dynamic Flight Ads campaign for the acquisition of new customers almost a year later. The campaigns are now achieving stable high performance without the need for frequent interventions and they work better than classic dynamic ads you know from e-commerce.
Flight tickets are a specific product that is difficult to grasp as a product in an e-shop. In addition, ticket prices vary several times a day. That is why we opted for Dynamic Flight Ads for flight tickets, to keep prices up to date and to use dynamic variables with information about possible flights in the ads themselves.
In 2017, when we launched the campaigns, only dynamic remarketing was available, which has run great from the very beginning and has had great results. We’ll show you later. However, we needed to figure out how to accommodate dynamic prospecting when an flight ticket function was not available in Ad Manager. Therefore, we set the first dynamic prospecting using a classic data source for e-shops with fictitious product IDs. However, we have encountered several issues that have drastically affected the campaign’s performance.
The main goal of the campaign was to maximize the number of conversions (flight ticket sales) at the lowest possible cost, while setting the maximum cost of conversion.
The campaign also aimed to use Dynamic Flight Ads for flight tickets (a specific type of dynamic ads in Facebook) to keep the prices and availability of tickets up to date.
The main goal of the campaign was to maximize the number of conversions (flight ticket sales) at the lowest possible cost, while setting the maximum cost of conversion.
The campaign also aimed to use Dynamic Flight Ads for flight tickets (a specific type of dynamic ads in Facebook) to keep the prices and availability of tickets up to date.
To run Dynamic Flight Ads, it was necessary to adjust both the pixel and the data source, because the default settings for e-commerce are not enough here.
The base pixel is the same as any other field. The difference is with individual events.
For flights we use:
The mandatory variables are then:
In the case of Student Agency we still also use the variable – Price (of flight ticket), which we then use directly in advertising.
Of course, the event can be expanded to include more accurate data, such as the number of passengers (adults, children, infants), travel class, etc.
An example of pixel implementation for ticket sales:
Source: Facebook support
When creating a ticket catalog, you need to select the correct Product Type in the first step. In the case of flight tickets, this should be the option “Flights.” The environment in the catalog manager adapts to the selected industry.
Data source specification
The data source for tickets (CSV, TSV or XML) must contain columns.
In the case of the Student Agency data source, we have also added optional fields that can be used in the advertising itself.
For each destination available in the data source, a ticket at the lowest possible price and availability are updated automatically every hour.
Data source preview:
Through Dynamic Flight Ads, we’ve approached both current website visitors and potential new customers on Facebook to cover the entire ticket purchasing process.
Ad Format:
Single image with automatic addition of route information and ticket price.
Targeting:
Here are a few more points about refined campaign settings. A product data source has been created but has a different specification than the flight ticket specification. As opposed to a ticket data source, it must include product ID, availability, condition, title and brand. All of these items were replaced with static values; only the ID was a fictive number.
Ad Format:
Carousel complete with a template created in the template Editor in the ROI Hunter platform with automatic filling of additional information about route and ticket price.
Targeting:
The disadvantage of this setting was the small reach of ads, but otherwise, the ads were displayed correctly for several months. There have been technical problems in the last 2 months, when the image of the ad did not match the description (for example, a picture of Barcelona was displayed for a New York flight). This was because the product in the data source did not match the pixel parameters on the web. That is why we had to completely stop the campaign.
After making the dynamic prospecting feature available, we launched campaigns with the same targeting as the previous ones, but from the data source for the tickets. The reach of ads has increased immediately and we no longer have a single technical issue with either delivery or ad display.
Ad Format:
Carousel with automatic additional information on route and ticket price.
Targeting:
Dynamic remarketing results have a 77% lower CPA than the maximum required conversion cost. The audience of users who looked at ticket details achieved on average an 11% lower CPA than the users who didn’t finish their purchase.
Summary of acquisition campaigns based on product and ticket data:
The original acquisition campaign based on the product data source had a difficult time achieving the required spending. In addition, the ads didn’t achieve the required reach, and there were frequent fluctuations. It was generally much more problematic to maintain a stable budget drawdown trend.
The acquisition campaign based on a flight ticket source data brings the budget to its maximum, does not fluctuate, and has a more stable campaign performance. It also achieves better results in terms of price conversion, of course, always taking into account seasonality and current developments in the flight ticket market.
Dynamic prospecting for flight tickets achieved a 27% lower price per conversion, a 35% lower CPC and a 145% higher CTR compared to the original campaign, which used data source for e-shops.