Global Travel Site Activates First-Party Data on CTV, Cuts Conversion Costs in Half

Most marketers are getting familiar with the notion of a retail media network. But retailers and traditional e-commerce giants aren’t the only businesses that can deploy their wealth of first-party as a new revenue stream.

A global e-commerce brand in the travel industry found themselves with significant first-party data they wanted to leverage for their brand, as well as their advertisers (e.g. tourism boards, global hotel brands). 

CTV seemed like an appealing option, but the proliferation of streaming services has fragmented CTV viewership, making it increasingly difficult for advertisers to reach viewers through a single channel.

The company needed a programmatic partner that would allow them to collect and onboard first-party data to:

• Identify and reach specific audiences

• Extend reach beyond their current advertising channels

• Prove attribution

• Drive incremental revenue

In partnership with Madhive, this travel giant harnessed the first-party data from their e-commerce site to precisely target direct audiences on CTV. After onboarding their data, the company was also able to finetune CTV campaign variables and leverage real-time audience data to inform the campaign and monitor the results, achieving an extremely effective cost per reach and unique cost per conversion rate. 

Here’s how the process worked.

Madhive deployed pixels across all pages of the travel brand’s e-commerce site, which were used to capture first-party information about each visitor’s geography, region, and country. The pixels were also able to capture additional user behavior on site, providing information about the visitors’ travel interests. 

We onboarded this data into the Madhive platform to create first-party audiences segments. For example, one advertiser was able to accurately target segments like:

• Utah & competitive destinations (Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, California)

• Outdoor travelers

• Family travelers

These first-party audiences are highly qualified and interested—and have no third-party data fees or privacy concerns.

With audiences identified, the next step is to serve these individuals the appropriate ads within premium CTV inventory. While fragmented CTV viewership can make it challenging to find specific audiences on a single streaming channel, programmatic marketplaces provide a wider breadth of options and inventory across a variety of streaming properties.

Madhive prioritizes partnerships with 5,000+ publishers, including direct partnerships with premium publishers. The Madhive platform also provides full transparency on where ads are running—across devices, geolocations, and individual publishers. 

The travel brand found Philo to be a top performer on conversion rate.

Because this travel brand had never advertised on CTV before, they weren’t sure what creative types or ad frequencies would work best for their audiences and objectives. They refined their strategies to optimize ad delivery, ensuring they not only reached their core audience more effectively—but also maximized advertising spend.

During the lifetime of the campaign, our client success team worked directly with the travel brand to track success metrics. We found that frequency rates of 5+ resulted in higher unique conversion rates. And when it came to creative length, 15-second ads drove more conversions than 30-second ads.

By using the first-party data segments, this global travel site was able to pinpoint their most qualified audiences. And by airing across a variety of premium CTV publishers, the brand was able to significantly reduce unique cost per reach.

Iterative testing showed the best parameters for the brand’s campaign included: 

• Outdoor Travelers and Adventure Attractions segments 

• 5+ ad frequency 

• 15-second creative

In partnership with Madhive, this travel brand was able to monetize their first-party data through CTV—by helping advertisers to reach more of the right audiences. They were also able to reduce costs per event, achieving:

• 36.7K+ hotel bookings and 648K hotel searches

• Total revenue of $10.9M

• 51% decrease in unique cost per conversion

• 99% video completion rate

Monetize your first-party data

Do you have valuable audience data you’d like to offer to your advertisers as a new revenue stream? It’s easy to get started. See how Madhive works today.