Online travel agency Vola.ro wanted to measure YouTube potential to actively drive concrete improvements in performance. Using TrueView for Action, the team created a test campaign and conducted a conversion lift study to accurately measure its impact.
Vola.ro is one of the largest online travel agencies in Romania. The website provides a one stop solution for travel planning and booking with customers able to secure flights, hotel reservations, holiday packages, travel insurance, as well as rental cars via its platform. A multi-award winning company, it has received accolades for being one of the fastest growing companies in Central Europe as well as being recognised as the country’s most used online travel agency.
For many travel related businesses, the start of the calendar year marks the beginning of high season and the early booking phase. Looking for innovative ways to maximise performance during this period, the company decided to experiment with TrueView for Action as a way of securing more bookings.
YouTube hasn’t traditionally been viewed by marketers as the most effective channel for driving action. Vola.ro had previously focussed its marketing on Search campaigns and believed that YouTube’s value lay more in brand building than conversions.
But against a rapidly changing digital landscape and with video’s popularity continuing to grow, increasing numbers of marketers are exploring ways to harness its power. Open to trying new approaches, Vola.ro decided to run a test campaign to discover whether YouTube’s TrueView for Action could make a direct impact on revenue.
TrueView for Action campaigns encourage users to explore products or services via prominent CTAs (calls-to-action) and headline text overlays on video ads. These clickable elements drive leads and conversions by providing viewers with the ability to take action directly while watching a video ad.
The online travel agency worked together closely with Google to build the creatives, with messages tailored for specific audiences.To properly gauge the success of the campaign, with assistance from Google, Vola.ro set up a conversion lift study to measure the outcomes.
The 28 day campaign delivered great results, directly driving 8305 view-through conversions, and, significantly, 1826 deep conversions (bookings). Incredibly it did this while maintaining a lower CPA than Search for the same period.
The conversion lift studies revealed a 7.3% relative lift for all conversion actions on converted users, while for flight conversions, the relative lift was 6.9% for converted users. The figures clearly demonstrated that these conversions would not have happened without the TrueView for Action campaign.
“The conversion lift study allowed us to measure the actual incremental effectiveness of the YouTube campaign. As a result we have changed our way of thinking about attribution models and we included YouTube campaigns as a part of our performance marketing strategy,” says Veranika Radecka, SEM & Performance Marketing Manager
This considerable success proved that YouTube could be effective in helping to fulfil Vola.ro’s performance objectives. The results were so positively received that they led to the business committing to using YouTube as part of its performance marketing strategy ongoing.
