Facebook™ is a great place to showcase your travel destinations with lavish photos and exciting videos, and there is one more thing that makes this social media platform attractive for travel agents like you, which is called Facebook™ travel ads.
The Evolution of Dynamic Ads into Facebook™ Travel Ads
You may have used this type of ads in the past. They were known as dynamic ads. You set them up to be shown to people who had recently interacted with your website without taking any action. Their name came from the way in which they were triggered – dynamically generated at the moment when someone in your audience of interest visited your website.
As it happens, travel agencies, hotels and airlines were the most-interested businesses in promoting their offer with dynamic ads. So the Facebook™ team made the decision to customise them specifically for this industry and turned them into Facebook™ travel ads.
How Do Facebook™ Travel Ads Work?
Facebook™ travel ads can be used to promote two types of offers:
Hotels
Flights
With these ads, you are able to:
Turn users’ travel intent into bookings,
Close deals with people who viewed travel offers on your website without taking action,
Show your clients upgrades and complementary offers to the package they’ve already purchased.
In order to reach these goals you will need:
- The Facebook™ Pixel – Facebook™ travel ads work only if you have this piece of code installed on your website;
- Your travel catalogue – you should have a list of your offers: product packages, location, price, availability, other details, all of them being included in the ad;
- An ad template – once you select a template, Facebook™ will dynamically introduce the visuals and the details from the catalogue you uploaded.
Technical Specifications for Facebook™ Travel Ads
Facebook™ will display your ads in the language you used in the catalogue. Your Facebook™ travel ads will not be translated into other languages. Thus, if you cater to specific international audiences, you should upload separate catalogues for ad campaigns targeted at those countries.
The recommended resolution for images is 600 x 600 pixels. Attention! For travel ads for hotels, you can use carousel ads and display several offers. Flight ads support only a single image ad format.
Also, Facebook™ travel ads are triggered by different events than those you had available for the old dynamic ads. At the moment, you can choose from the following trigger events:
View Content
Add to Cart
Purchase.
Facebook™ travel ads are served on all devices (desktop, laptop, mobile phone or tablet) irrespective of the device originally used to interact with your website.
Target People Before They Finalise Travel Plans with Trip Consideration Ads
Trip Consideration ads are different from Facebook™ travel ads, but they are worth exploring. This feature was created after Facebook™ commissioned GfK to survey millennials concerning their travel habits.
The survey showed that:
68% of the respondents discovered inspiration for their next trip on Facebook™;
60% of them found great travel ideas on Instagram.
Trip Consideration works like this: a person browsed various pages relating to mountain trips, skiing, and similar destinations and activities, without taking any actions. By serving ads promoting mountain resorts in your portfolio to users at this early moment, you advance them down your sales funnel at a faster pace and, effectively, make them decide on their next travel destination.
In conclusion, you have many options to promote your packages and travel offers on Facebook™ and you should get started as soon as possible with Facebook™ travel ads especially because the early booking season is in full swing!