Airlines, like other travel brands, have a lot to gain by retargeting. Particularly if a potential customer is in the midst of making a reservation when they leave your website. In this edition, I’ve gathered ads from a few different airlines, none of whom are doing exactly what they should be doing, but a few are getting pretty close.
1. airberlin
Everything about this ad seems forced. The cheesy headline. The man posing like he’s asleep, but you can tell he’s just posing (who sleeps like that?). The over-simplified tagline – Your Airline. Perhaps something got lost in translation? It certainly wouldn’t be the first time if that were the case.
2. Southwest Airlines
Southwest Airlines is onto something. Someone searches for a flight, and you retarget them with a photo of the place they were thinking about booking. Though I’m not quite sure how much a bucket of peaches really taps into someone’s desire to go to Atlanta. I realize Georgia is the Peach State, but there’s so much more to both the city and the state than peaches. Smart strategy, but sloppily executed. This has the potential to become a good, effective retargeting campaign with a simple photo switch.
3. Virgin America
This screenshot is the payoff of another screen that says “Dine Way Out.” It has some pretty cool graphics that make it look like the airplane is flying past the words on the screen. This was one of a series in which Virgin America promoted its in-flight benefits over the destination or overall brand. Food on-demand? Live TV? Yes, please. And they customized the ad to feature the destination I was in the process of booking, so that’s a plus. But is just listing the name as effective as putting a photo of what I could be doing in San Francisco?