Vola.ro wanted to continue its rapid growth by reaching new customers and driving improved conversion rates. The online travel agency hoped to do this without increasing its CPA, so decided to experiment with Smart Display to determine if this format could produce better results at a similar cost.
About Vola.ro
Founded in 2007
Online travel agency
Headquarters in Bucharest, Romania
Goals
Increase conversion volume
Maintain CPA in line with historic Display CPA
Approach
Used Smart Display campaigns to target new users
Continuously optimised campaign
Results
36% incremental conversions driven by Smart Display campaigns
27% of total conversions came from Smart Display campaigns
40% higher conversion rate
Vola.ro is one of Romania’s largest and fastest growing online travel agencies. As a one stop solution for travel planning and booking, customers are able to book flights, make hotel reservations, purchase vacation packages, order travel insurance and rent cars via its platform.
After experiencing a growth of more than 6000% in the last 5 years, the award winning travel agency wanted to continue this trend and was looking at ways of acquiring new users. After being introduced to Google Smart Display campaigns, it decided to test the format to see if it could connect and engage with new customers.
Smart Display campaigns
Smart Display helps simplify and streamline the process of setting up and managing display advertising. By utilising the power of advanced machine learning, many aspects of Smart display campaigns are automated — including bids which are set based on a target CPA.
Google’s machine learning then works to automatically create images, native and text ads to fit anywhere across the Google Display Network. Smart Display campaigns enable businesses to promote products and services to a new customer base in a relevant way at the right time, making them more likely to convert.
While the online travel agency was open to testing this new approach to obtaining new users, one of its main concerns was to ensure that it wouldn’t lead to an increase in CPA. This was no small challenge, considering that typical Smart Display campaign CPAs are 20%-30% higher than remarketing. But with the help of machine learning and automated bidding, along with optimisation based on these insights, Vola.ro was able to secure more conversions without surpassing its target CPA.
The results
Vola.ro’s online marketing had traditionally focussed on Search, with display campaigns using Dynamic Remarketing. But with Smart Display it was able to reach a new and broader audience, while still optimising for conversions.
The overall results were both surprising to the team and extremely welcome. Using Smart Display, Vola.ro were able to drive 36% more conversions with a similar CPA, compared to the Dynamic Remarketing campaigns it was previously running. 27% of total conversions on display came from the Smart display campaigns, while it also achieved a 40% higher conversion rate compared to the rest of display
“Smart display campaign has helped us to expand our display campaigns in a manner we didn’t think was possible from a CPA perspective. We increased traffic to the site and obtained more sales while maintaining the same CPA. Smart Display is the perfect complement to our marketing strategy and it also saved us time in the ad creation process.”
— Daniel Truica, CEO of Vola.ro
