Kayak launched its all-important TV ad campaign Sunday, Nov. 1, and Hitwise tells me that Kayak’s traffic increased 3% in the first three days compared with the Sunday, Monday and Tuesday of the previous week.
The first three days obviously won’t tell the story of what, for Kayak, is a massive ad spend and marketing gamble.
Forbes says Kayak plans to spend “most” of its $60 million ad budget offline to get more brand recognition from the 68% of U.S. online travel planners who don’t have Kayak on their radar.
Kayak CEO Steve Hafner told me recently that Kayak “significantly reduced” its SEM (search engine marketing) through Google in early August, “which dropped our traffic from them but had no impact on our search volumes.”
When asked about the Hitwise data showing a 3% lift in traffic in the Sunday to Tuesday period, compared with the same three days a week earlier, Hafner says that’s “understated.”
Hafner adds: “The true measure of lift isn’t total traffic but source of traffic (self, affiliate, paid search). You might consider that we could pull back in one channel to see the effects of another.”
Without Kayak’s internal data, it is difficult to gauge what the 3% uptick — or more, if it truly is understated, as Hafner says — means.
At any rate, three days is just a blip of time in an ongoing campaign.
One advertising exec tells me that it is still too early to tell whether that lift was directly caused by the TV ads or by other factors.
It’s too soon to tell whether there is a discernible and sustainable pattern.
But, the advertising exec says 3% is interesting, especially since there usually is a substantial decline in travel industry Web traffic in the fourth quarter because of seasonal factors.
Plus, the advertising exec notes, if Kayak reduced its marketing in some channels prior to launching the TV ads, then the lift from the ads may be considerably larger.
Kayak’s looking for a big lift, but the jury’s still out on whether it will happen.
Interesting reading and interpreting of the tea leaves here. It will be very hard to track the actual effectiveness of this, or any other, TV campaign. As mentioned here, there are so many other factors to consider. What would not surprise me is the company putting their own spin on any results to prove to the punditry that the campaign was indeed a success. Who would openly admit that $ 60 million didn’t really do the trick of getting more “brand recognition” in the marketplace? I, for one, have never seen or heard that kind of statement before in public.
Sorry to be a debbie-downer, but why are we measuring a TV branding campaign based on direct response metrics?
My bet is Kayak (or their ad agency) is building a heavy duty econometric model that is taking all marketing tactics into account to determine multi-channel ROI. But if the purpose is awareness, we should be talking about lift in favorability, etc., rather than traffic impact.
What I think is incredible, though, is that Kayak “significantly reduced” its Google SEM, “which dropped traffic from them but had no impact on our search volumes.”
Does this mean Kayak was buying a lot of duplicate visits? Or that they found other lead gen channels to drive more cost efficient search volume? Maybe both?
Peter: Great points about the complexities of measuring a branding campaign. And great questions about the pullback in SEM through Google. Here are some more questions to add to the list: Did Kayak pull back in Google to save pennies for the TV ads? I wonder if Travelocity took a similar tack several years ago when it started to get the Roaming Gnome on TV. Was it a move, as Hafner suggests, to measure the impact of other channels? By the way, I never met debbie-downer, but your questions are good.
Joe: Maybe we won’t have to rely on Kayak’s self-assessments about the branding campaign. Perhaps the ultimate verdict will be whether Kayak moves ahead and has a successful IPO.