While we are still not over the covid crisis, some markets are seeing a definite upwards trend in flight sales for 2021. A lot of people are betting on vaccines solving part of the problem and sanitary passports to allow more and more people to come back to travel the world again.
Regardless of that, demand is still low so competition has become tougher than ever to sell the few tickets the market is buying.
One of the biggest opportunities you can find right now to increase your share is to take advantage of native ads on metasearches. Very few brands are actually bidding there and that translates to all-time low costs per click.
We took Kayak as an example and ran some random searches on the US market to see how many brands are appearing on the sidebar native ads (a.k.a. Compare to) and who they are. If there are this few competitors on their biggest market, imagine how easier it is on others.
Domestic
- Priceline
- Crystal
- Go Travel
To France:
- FlightGuru
- Frenchbee
To Mexico
- Go Travel
To Spain
- Flight Guru
To UK
- Flight Guru
To Italy
- Flight Guru
To Thailand
- Emirates
To most South America and Asia
- None
Final Thoughts
While this represents just one market, the idea is to understand that right now sidebar ads is a cheap real estate you can take advantage of. Even if you don’t get clicks, the free brand awareness is there since it shows up very high on the results page and everyone sees it.
Talk to your account executive on the metas you are running and ask for a deal. Bid the minimum amount and you will not lose money on this.
How is your market recovering? Feel free to leave a comment!
