Etihad Airways

The Objective

Etihad Airways, a global luxury airline serving over 75 destinations, wanted to understand how TikTok's latest travel innovations could help fuel their business growth. Etihad launched its digital transformation journey with TikTok by building a strong infrastructure and pioneering several travel alphas. This collaboration ensured that both TikTok and Etihad were prepared for the next frontier, a robust travel solution that leverages TikTok authenticity and entertainment capabilities, designed to drive optimal business results. By combining travel signals, TikTok-first creative assets, and an optimal media strategy, Etihad delivered highly relevant and engaging content. This approach led to impressive results, making Etihad the first airline globally to launch Dynamic Travel Ads.

The Solution

TikTok, Etihad Airways, and Cross Media collaborated to launch the dynamic travel ads alpha, enabling Etihad to promote flight destinations through a travel intent model. This approach, enhanced by travel cards highlighting key selling points, personalized ads based on user interests. By connecting directly to Etihad’s global catalog, TikTok delivered dynamic content that matched users with relevant destinations, offering a more engaging and tailored ad experience. The implementation followed 4 phases:

1. Infrastructure:

   1. Signals: Implemented Events API data integration, incorporating travel parameters to securely capture signals of travel intent.

   2. Flight Catalog: Linked Etihad's global catalog with TikTok with updated custom labels to leverage the travel card with unique selling points.

   3. Travel Cards: Customizable labels on display cards, showcasing Etihad's unique USPs.

• Creative: Leveraged TikTok creative solutions TTCX to "TikTok-fy" their assets by collaborating with TikTok creative partners to create 4 unique videos used for prospecting strategy following a single video ad format. Whereas for retargeting strategy, the creative partner developed a branded catalog template following a catalog video ad format that dynamically changes destination based on information from the catalog.

• Media: Launched dynamic travel ads solution across 4 key markets (UAE, UK,US and AU) following a campaign strategy that focused on 3 audience groups: Prospecting by targeting high intent users, Lookalike modeling and Retargeting by leveraging 1p data to find relevant users.

• Measurement: Ran a conversion lift study to measure incremental conversions when running dynamic travel ads wherein users are randomly split into one of two groups, either having the ad loaded in their TikTok feed ('treatment') or having it removed ('control'). Conversions are then compared across the two groups to understand if the ad had an impact on driving users to take action.

The Results

To measure success, we ran the campaign alongside TikTok's conversion lift studies. The conversion lift study demonstrated impressive results, confirming the effectiveness of dynamic travel ads by showing positive growth across all key metrics. These ads led to a +7% lift in flight searches and an impressive +17% increase in flight bookings. Most notably, there was a +232% incremental ROAS, showcasing the high impact and profitability of this innovative approach. Dynamic travel ads not only boosted booking conversions but also amplified the overall success of Etihad’s digital marketing strategy, driving stronger business outcomes and deepening customer engagement.