Dynamic Ads for Travel: Facebook revolutionizes marketing for the travel industry

How many holiday snaps of friends and family do you have in your Facebook feed? It's bound to be quite a few.
Travel is everywhere you go on Facebook. The social network, with just shy of 2 billion members, plays a pivotal role in the travel experience for many of us – from the initial idea, to seeking advice and exchanging experiences, right down to sharing your favorite travel moments.
According to a study by Sparkler and Facebook, 84% of users surveyed feel inspired by travel recommendations from their friends and family. 95% reported using Facebook for travel-related activities directly before booking.
This behavior is enormously valuable for advertisers in the travel industry. So, it hardly comes as a surprise that Facebook has launched a dedicated ad format for travel advertisers to more effectively speak to their audience: welcome Dynamic Ads for Travel (DAT).

What are Facebook Dynamic Ads for Travel?

Dynamic Ads for Travel (DAT) are an extension of Dynamic Ads for ecommerce (formerly Dynamic Product Ads). Dynamic ads were introduced to allow you to automatically promote your entire product catalog on Facebook, only showing consumers the products relevant to them. The ads brought a powerful new way for online retailers to promote their products. Over the last two years, they have proven to become one of the most successful retargeting formats, so much so that hotels and meta-search providers started showing an interest and began using Dynamic Ads too.
However, the ecosystem and needs of the travel industry are greatly different to those of online retailers, meaning the possibilities with Dynamic Ads were limited. The structure was inherently defined for e-commerce. Realizing the potential it had for travel marketers, Facebook optimized the structure to meet their unique needs. This is where Dynamic Ads for Travel come in.

What are the benefits of Facebook Dynamic Ads for Travel?

With the launch of Dynamic Ads for Travel, travel companies can now finally advertise their products in a way that suits their industry. Currently, the new format supports hotels and accommodation, airlines, and meta-search providers.
Key benefits brought by the Dynamic Ads format as a whole have been carried over onto DAT, such as:

• Ads are automatically triggered
• The ad content (i.e. your offer) is dynamically inserted based on who the ad is displayed to
• The ad content is drawn from a travel catalog that lists every one of your offers with details
• Ads are optimized with Facebook’s intelligent algorithm, meaning product ads are shown to users who are most likely to convert
• Your reach includes a vast audience of almost 2 billion Facebook users and another 1 billion from the Facebook Audience Network
• Facebook's extremely granular targeting options based on the wealth of information it has about its users

What is special about Dynamic Ads for Travel?

DAT provides travel companies with a unique opportunity to display individually tailored offers to millions of potential customers – generating a direct increase in sales. While the underlying principle of DAT is the same as that for Dynamic Ads, travel companies can now advertise with much greater relevance and effect thanks to some key changes.

More relevant product information for travel offers

The travel feed submitted to Facebook can include additional travel-related information. Instead of attributes like size, color and material, with DAT marketers can define details for location, type of accommodation, star ratings, and so on.
Using these attributes, you can bundle together similar travel offers in one product set, such as "Family hotels with 4 stars in Portugal." Facebook can then display these in a multi-image display so that the travel destination is ideally matched to the target group.

Dynamic feeds for prices and availability

As prices and room vacancies change constantly, DAT supports a dynamic feed that can be managed separately to ensure Facebook always has the latest information.

Event tracking along the booking funnel

With DAT, users can be addressed at various stages of their travel journey, from the initial idea to booking, by tracking "events." While Dynamic Ads have three events – ViewContent, AddToChart, and Purchase – the DAT pixel has four stages: Search, ViewContent, InitiateCheckout, and Purchase.

Tracking travel-related searches

When users search for offers with information such as destination, dates, number of guests, price range and features of the accommodation on TripAdvisor, trivago, and Kayak, this information can flow into the Facebook display and can also be pre-filled in on the landing page.

Upselling and cross-selling

DAT is ideal for upselling and cross-selling offers. For example, once a user has booked a flight, they generally need a hotel and may also be interested in hiring a car or suitable local leisure activities.

Recommendation of alternative offers

If hotels and flights are fully booked, Facebook automatically recommends similar options, or, if no similar options are currently available, offers generally popular alternatives.

Tailored targeting of travel target groups

The combination of product sets, availability, travel interests, booking funnel and complimentary travel products allow an unbelievably wide range of options for precision targeted advertising.
For example, a family of 4 has looked at a specific hotel three times in the last two weeks without actually booking. The mother may, in turn, see an ad on Facebook for a flight to that destination. The dates they were previously searching for and the number of people is automatically specified.
We’ve got much more where that came from… In collaboration with Facebook Marketing Partner Adphorus, we have published an extensive guide on this topic.

Learn more about Dynamic Ads for Travel – with our free guide

More and more travel companies are integrating the channel into their digital strategy. Don't be left behind – start your first Dynamic Ads for Travel campaign today!
For a full low-down on everything DAT, download our free ebook on Dynamic Ads for Travel.
Included in this guide:

• What are Dynamic Ads for Travel and how can they help  travel companies
• Two important pre-campaign requirements
• The different  travel feeds and how to set them up
• A step-by-step campaign setup with sample case studies
• Special tips and tools to help you optimize your performance every step of the way