These days nobody plans a vacation without doing extensive research into flights, hotels, local attractions, restaurants, etc., with an eye for finding the best value. According to Google Insights, only 9% of U.S. travelers “always” know what brand they want to book with prior to researching. That leaves the majority of travel-seekers available to be influenced by bloggers, influencers, and great deal offers. Thusly, rich content rules the travel world.
SmarterTravel has been delivering expert travel tips, inspiring destination stories, and timely travel news to passionate travellers since 1998. With multiple brands including Airfarewatchdog, BookingBuddy, and Jetsetter – and expansive online reach – they saw a greater opportunity to monetize their much sought-after content through partnership.
To that end, they recently launched their SmarterAds program for travel publishers, leveraging the Partnerize platform. Since launch, enrollment in the SmarterAds program has far exceeded expectations as many travel publishers move quickly to capitalize on this lucrative new revenue stream.
In the first months after launch, the program grew by 65%, and reduced partner onboarding time by 50%. Another quick benefit for SmarterTravel was decreased operational resources by using a consolidated platform with real-time reporting and richer partner insights.
SmarterAds is a turnkey self-service solution designed to enable travel publishers of all sizes to monetize their traffic through a suite of monetization products. By participating in this B2B partnership program, travel publishers can add revenue-driving solutions, such as flight and hotel search or native content recommendations, to their pages quickly and easily, and get paid faster than other industry offerings.
Partnerize enables SmarterTravel to cultivate direct relationships with travel publishers, simplifying and speeding up the process of onboarding and implementation. It also ensures that SmarterTravel and its partners gain access to real-time data and insights to understand which programs and offers are driving more bookings.
As part of the SmarterAds program, the parties are sharing visitor data in order to deliver customized messages and offers based upon where a visitor is in the path to purchase journey. The SmarterAds program leads the industry with its breadth of partner programs and models that span the consumer online travel journey. Many companies are broadening their definition of the partner channel as they forge new ways of working with other companies for mutual benefit. New models and payment structures like SmarterAds are helping accelerate this already fast-growing industry.
“Strategic partnership programs like SmarterAds give companies new ways to create value, especially in the competitive industry of travel,” said Malcolm Cowley, Co-founder and CEO of Partnerize. “We’re excited to see SmarterTravel leverage the flexibility of our platform to optimize their program and drive growth.”
Check out MediaPost’s coverage of the announcement, and for even greater insight into the success of this program, download our SmarterTravel case study.
