Resident and international travelers in the United States combined spent $124 million per hour in 2018, according to the U.S. Travel Association. The old days of booking travel with an agent in-person are long gone, thanks to the internet and apps offering flights, hotels, cars and more at the click of a mouse (or tap of the finger). Below, we dive into the online travel industry’s advertising trends with insights from iSpot.tv, and look at influencer marketing engagement benchmarks for the category with data from CreatorIQ. 

iSpot.tv, always-on TV ad measurement and attribution company, examined TV advertising trends for online travel sites in Q3 in their latest performance report (available here) diving into the travel business industry, including companies handling hotel bookings, flights, car rentals and the like.

The report found that 22 brands spent an estimated $180 million on TV ads, which in turn generated over 17.9 billion TV ad impressions — proving, again, why TV isn’t going anywhere. However, the report notes seasonal decreases from Q2’s estimated $209.9 million and 20.4 billion impressions. 

In terms of networks, Fox News, HGTV and NBC racked up the highest impression-counts for the category. And although sports (especially NFL and college football) were big players in terms of impressions generation, the top genres for travel sites overall were reality series, movies on TV and drama & action series. 

Looking at the true incrementality of TV using the iSpot Lift Rating (the percent of the audience that’s been converted  — moved to engage in a desired action — by TV ads), it was 27.09% this quarter, a 6% jump from Q2’s 21.31% lift. NBC Sports delivered the highest lift for the category, followed by Fox Business and CNBC. Fox was the only broadcast network to make the top ten ranking, which highlights why cable TV networks shouldn’t be forgotten in all the re-bundling of streaming services: for brands, they drive business results.

For more, visit: https://www.ispot.tv/free-reports 

Influencer Marketing Engagement Benchmarks for Travel

Influencer marketing continues to be a big tactic for many brands, and the travel industry is no different. Recently, CreatorIQ, an influencer platform that helps companies run brand ambassador campaigns with content creators, examined sponsored campaigns between brands and creators across social networks including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube to determine engagement benchmarks. 

YouTube had the highest average engagement overall (3.91%), with Instagram in second place — but different post types on the platform have different engagement rates, with carousel posts being the most successful (2.56% engagement rate), followed by single-image posts (2.54%) and videos (2.31%). 

The audience size of creators also plays a role in engagement rates: although it may be counterintuitive, influencers with smaller followings often have a better engagement rate than those with huge audiences, as you can see in the infographic below.