Facebook's trip consideration objective: What you need to know

By Declan Kennedy, CEO, StitcherAds.

Facebook has announced that its ad platform will now offer an optimisation option called Trip Consideration, which will target users who are in the early stages of considering a trip.

The option rolls out as another addition to the options for travel advertisers, who also benefited from the launch of Dynamic Travel Ads in October of last year.

Unlike Dynamic Travel Ads, which retarget site visitors, Trip Consideration aims to reach people identified to be in the initial stages of looking for a travel destination based on behaviours exhibited on Facebook or Instagram. This could help advertisers reach more travel-ready millennials, in particular. According to a GfK survey commissioned by Facebook, 68 percent of millennials found ideas for their most recent trip on Facebook, and 60 percent found them on Instagram.

Last October, Dynamic Travel Ads for Broad Audiences introduced a travel-specific and automated ad format for advertisers to expand their reach to travel audiences. Previously, travel advertisers would create Lookalike Audiences mirroring their website or mobile app visitors to optimise new users or utilise interest-based optimistion. Broad Audiences introduced the ability to reach people who have expressed intent to travel to specific destinations, even if they have not been to your site or app. So for example they may have indicated something along the lines of I'm interested in going to Bali destinations.

Now, Facebook's Trip Consideration provides a new optimisation option aimed to reach trip-takers in the early stages of consideration where they have intent to travel but no clear idea of which destination, country or resort. Trip Consideration sits higher in a travel companies purchasing funnel, focusing on users that might be likely to travel, but haven't indicated where they want to go. Whereas a user reached through Broad Audiences may have shown interest in traveling to a certain location (e.g. Bali), a user targeted with a Trip Consideration campaign may have indicated they enjoy traveling to warm, sunny, beachy places. Here's an example of how the it works: A college student is interested in going on spring break at the beach and looks at travel-related pages but hasn't picked an exact location. From there, travel advertisers can push ads to the student promoting flight or hotel deals.

This provides a unique opportunity for travel marketers to place themselves top of mind earlier, in fact before the planning even starts.

Trip Consideration was provided to a small number of Facebook Marketing Partners, like StitcherAds, prior to its wider release. Therefore for those travel advertisers who are looking to prep themselves and take advantage of this new optimisation option here's what you need to know:

1. Trip Consideration does not require a catalogue and is easy to get started with your own choice of creative.
   
   Trip Consideration is ideal for reaching people looking for travel inspiration, it's an opportunity to feature top travel deals, destinations and content to inspire users to take a trip with your offers.
   
   
2. Trip Consideration can be added to Lookalike Audiences or other audience targeting.
   
   For audiences built under the Conversions objective, the Trip Consideration objective can be added to improve campaign performance. When selecting your optimisation for ad delivery, toggle on the option to prioritise delivery to people who plan to travel.

We had the opportunity to test Trip Consideration with a major vacation rental company, comparing ad sets optimising Lookalike Audiences with and without Trip Consideration. What we found is that ads using Trip Consideration drove a 33% lower cost per booking and 59% higher conversion rate.

As we read more and more reports about people working more, and holidaying in different ways maybe we could all use a little nudge in the right direction? Last year ONS figures showed that UK residents are going on more but shorter holidays – with longer holidays becoming much less popular with a marked decline in the popularity of two-week holidays with residents opting for shorter breaks. And the good news is that Trip Consideration is here to give travelers the opportunity to plan way in advance.