Selecting routes for campaign creation
Introduction
The Campaign Optimiser is a tool designed to empower our Advertising Partners and Commercial Managers to unlock the true potential of Skyscanner marketplace interaction data. It recommends short and sharp tactical advertising opportunities at Route levels that can increase Shares of Voice and overall revenue or return on advertising spend. It does not intend to replace or recommend up-weights or down-weight for current BAU campaign activities.
The Campaign Optimiser tool lets you make quick tactical decisions for new advertising upsell opportunities at the individual route level. The benefits will be:
- Take actionable insights to increase the share of voice against competing Airlines/OTAs in a given market for a given set of routes and a set date range.
- To act as a tactical lever for you to identify opportunities to increase your Share of Voice at the route level and how much more advertising budget you should invest to impact the overall Share of Voice.
It is important to you because:
- You can access unrivalled travel demand-generated ads and actionable insights data to run short and sharp campaigns and maximise revenue.
- You can understand what travellers are looking for and when to adjust tactical ads strategy accordingly.
- You will get travel supply and competitiveness insights to capture and monitor the Share of Voice trend.
- You can increase ROI and compete in our marketplace effectively.
Getting access
Once the tool is enabled for your Partner Portal Org, the Commercial Manager will notify you. If this is your first time getting access to Partner Portal, you will receive a welcome email notification.
Clicking Log In, you are redirected to the Partner Portal Login page. If you are a first-time user, you must set up a new password before logging in. You can also change the password from this page.
After successfully logging in to your account, you will access Campaign Optimiser in the Partner Portal.
Campaign Optimiser Layout
There is an option for Campaign Optimiser in the left-hand panel in your Partner Portal. The Campaign Optimiser module is only visible if it has been enabled for your subscription.
If working correctly, you should see Campaign Optimiser followed by your organisation in the header bar and your email address on the right side of the header bar.
It should look something similar to the below image.
Using the filters
When using the Campaign Optimiser for the first time, you will see the data for all Routes, Markets and Devices you are serving via your API in the default performance period of the last 15 days. You can now use the filters to find the data points you want to analyse.
Routes
The first filter is Routes. There are two options; you can view all the routes or select the custom option to filter the routes.
There are multiple ways to search, select and deselect origins and destinations:
- By default, the All routes data is selected.
- Enter an origin or destination into the text field. Type a city name and select it from the list.
- You can use the origin and destination fields in any way you want. For example, you can enter London in the origin field and then enter multiple cities in the destination field.
- Clear selections by clicking on the cross in the individual location.
- After selecting your origin and destinations, click apply to add them to the filter.
Market
The second filter is Markets. By default, all markets are selected; however, the filter may restrict the number of markets shown based on your subscription. Again there are two options; you can leave it as all markets selected, or you can use the custom option to select the markets you want to analyse.
- Markets are selected by Country name or IATA code.
- Enter multiple countries to apply them to the filter.
- Clear selections by clicking on the cross in the individual location.
- After selecting your origin and destinations, click apply to add them to the filter.
Performance Period Filter
You can use this filter to select the last 7, 10 or 15 days to analyse.
Device Filter
You can use this filter to select campaigns by where the Campaign was placed.
Autosave
The Campaign Optimiser automatically save your filters, so if you leave the page and return to it later, it will load your selected filters automatically. The filters will only change once you physically change them.
Recommendations table
The recommendation table is displayed in an easy-to-read format.
The total number of recommendations in the report will be the same as your filtered search criteria.
Each row line item displays key metrics to help you analyse the route level's current performance and future opportunities. For example, it will enable you to increase your share of voice by introducing ad campaigns.
The default sort order is by Total searches; however, you can change the sort order by any column of your choosing.
The table is limited to 10 line items by default, but the bottom right arrows can show more results. You can also increase the number of line items by changing the rows field at the bottom of the page.
Column header explanation
You can see that in the Routes tab, there are several columns of information. So you can get the best usage of the tool, please take a look at the below explanation of what each column means.
Status - This column will show the current status of this route and line item. For example, if you have ordered a campaign, this column will have ordered on this line item.
Route - This has been selected via your filter. It represents the route based on the origin and destination.
Market - This has also been selected via your filter. It represents the Skyscanner user's chosen country when using the Skyscanner website or app.
Total searches - This is the total search volume for the routes in the past performance period selected.
Previous Ad Spend - The advertising amount spent by the partner is based on the campaign clicks in the past performance period selected.
Your SOV - This is the Share of Voice based on the redirects, both paid and organic clicks. The Share of Voice is based on all competing partners for a market/route, i.e. they can be either airlines or OTAs.
Change - This column shows the Share of Voice changes over the past 12 weeks and is displayed as a percentage.
SOV rank - This is your Share of Voice rank based on the current period Share of Voice compared to the other partner's Share of Voice competing for the same route. On the left side of this column is a helpful graph showing the difference compared to your competitors.
Share of voice graph
The Share of Voice graph can be accessed by clicking the blue lines in the Change column.
The graph shows a weekly Share of Voice performance for your company vs other Skyscanner partners over the last 12 weeks.
The graph default can show a maximum of five providers and every other provider grouped as the Other percentage.
The Customise button allows you to select five providers of your choice. For example, you may only want to compare the Share of Voice with other airlines if you are an airline.
In the London to Dubai example below, you can see that on the 12th of June, travelup had the greatest SoV with 24.2% of CVlick share (based on redirect). Hovering over a different date will show different results.
The benefit of this graph is to help you understand how competitive your Share of Voice is against the rest of the market, and you can evaluate the impact of introducing an ads campaign on the Share of Voice. If you'd like to access complete Travel Insight data, please contact Commercial Manager to subscribe to our Travel Insight product.
Selecting routes for campaign creation
After reviewing the results according to your search criteria, it is straightforward to place an order.
A check box on each line item is on the left before the Status column. Click on each line item that you want to add an order. When you do this, the Create Campaign button is enabled. In the example below, I have selected five line items.
After selecting the line items, click Create Campaign. You will be asked to give the Campaign a name. For this demonstration, I will call this Campaign - Test 27072023. You can call the Campaign by any name, but every Campaign must have a unique name.
Now that my Campaign has been created, there is a campaign page which will allow you to edit before submitting your order.
In the example below, the five line items have been added to my Campaign - Test 27072023.
The options to edit, enable, merge or delete line items in the Campaign are activated only when one or more line items are selected.
If you come out of this Campaign screen for any reason, you can go back into it by using the Campaigns option on the left-hand side and then clicking on your Campaign.
Column header explanation
The table has slightly different columns from the Recommendations table.
Route - This will have been selected via your filter. It represents the route based on origin and destination.
Product - The type of product these recommendations are.
Markets - This will have been selected via your filter. It represents the Skyscanner user's chosen country when using the Skyscanner website or app.
Start - The start date of the proposed Campaign.
End - The end date of the proposed Campaign.
Expected clicks - The total number of clicks you can expect from your Campaign based on the audience size and the estimated click-through rate.
Expected SOV impact - The estimated increase in your share of voice with additional budget.
Budget - The recommended budget spend to increase paid clicks.
Editing a Campaign
Before booking an order, you must edit all the line items in your Campaign and assign the appropriate budget to each line item.
To do this, click the check box on one of the line items and click Edit.
By clicking the Edit options, you will see a pop-up where you can edit the order.
Product
Here you can choose a product that suits your goal.
Budget
You can select a budget for your route selection. There are two pricing options - Budget and Clicks.
The Expected clicks will populate if you enter a monetary value in the Budget field. This is because the Expected clicks are based on Budget/CPC. Alternatively, you can select the Clicks radio button to enter the number of clicks you want, and then the Budget field will populate.
Delivery
You can select a preferred date and time to start your Campaign.
As you can see from the example below, there are changes to the Expected Clicks and Budget columns.
These steps must be repeated for every line item in your Campaign.
If you change your mind and decide that one of the line items can be removed from this Campaign, you can use the Delete option. Similarly, you can use the Add line item option to add a line item not already in your existing Campaign.
Enable
After adding a budget to your line item, you can now enable the line item. Clicking the Enable option shows a pop-up screen with a check to see if you are sure you would like to enable this line item.
Disable
After enabling a line item, you can disable it to remove it from the order.
Merge
There is a merge option for merging two different line items in one line item.
Ready to book
After editing each line item and assigning a budget, you should have a total budget amount at the bottom of your Campaign screen.
You now also have the opportunity to add Contacts to your Campaign. This is a useful option to inform some of your colleagues about your Campaign.
Seeking help
There is a Help function available to you if you should need it.
The Raise a Support request option will open your email service, and you can email advertisingdelivery@skyscanner.net.
Before raising a support request, you will likely find the answer on our help site, which contains some helpful FAQs and troubleshooting tips.