Native advertising enhances DMO marketing campaign

VisitScotland wanted to attract a broader range of global travellers, but needed a strategy that would help expand their reach and impact amongst their desired audience. They partnered with us to build and drive destination marketing strategies that raised awareness of Scotland and cast a wide net to reach interested travellers in the US and Europe.

This tourism marketing campaign benefited from the volume of data and insights we provided, which helped VisitScotland reach its desired travellers. To bolster this effort, our real-time data, dedicated experts and unique destination advertising solutions allowed VisitScotland to adapt to the new tourism environment it found itself in.   

To fully embrace a rebuilt and renewed tourism marketing strategy, we worked with VisitScotland to roll out a campaign in two waves.

Timing was key, so the first phase of the campaign emphasised building awareness, whilst the second phase focused on converting travellers.

Native advertising was primarily used in the awareness phase of the media plan, coupled with a standard IAB display. This approach allowed us to help build a campaign for VisitScotland to appear where travellers were focussing their attention.   

By using our native ads to get in front of travellers that were interested in visiting Scotland, the campaign drove above-average CTR and had an impactful 80:1 return on ad spend. The success of this tourism marketing campaign helped raise the visibility of VisitScotland with our incentivised travellers and actively drove conversions and bookings to Scotland.

Our unique ad designs and targeted placements helped to cement the VisitScotland brand while engaging travellers with immersive and informative native ads found on prominent homepages and hotel search results pages. To further extend the impact of this, the standard IAB display was complemented by top performing and visually engaging native placements. For example, we built visually engaging native ads that showcased Edinburgh Castle. That’s one example of how we use iconic imagery to connect with travellers, but DMOs can choose to highlight activities, specific urban or rural areas or anything else that they want to connect with travellers.