Campaign Optimiser FAQs

What is the Campaign Optimiser?

The Campaign Optimiser is a tool designed to empower our Partners and Account Managers to unlock the true potential of Skyscanner marketplace interaction data. It recommends short and sharp tactical campaigns for Markets & Routes that have the true potential to increase both Shares of Voice and Total Revenue. It does not intend to replace or recommend for current BAU campaign activities. 

Why should I use the Campaign Optimiser?

The Campaign Optimiser tool aims to enable you to make quick tactical decisions 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 route level and how much more advertising budget should you invest to impact the overall share of voice.  

It is important to you because:

• You will be able to access unrivalled travel demand-generated ads 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.

What is the difference between Always-On and Campaign Optimiser campaigns?

Always On is based on a forecast for the last 30 days, but over the next 6 months, the shape and volume of that forecast will change (i.e. An unforeseen summer surge to a popular destination). Therefore, the Campaign Optimiser recommends tactical campaigns to run an ad burst and capitalise on this additional demand. 

How do I access the Campaign Optimiser?

First, contact your Skyscanner Account Manager to get your company added as a Partner. 

After you have been set up in the Partner Portal, you will receive a welcome onboard email. 

Clicking Log in, you will be redirected to the Partner Portal Login page. If you are a first-time user, you will need to 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 be able to access Campaign Optimiser from Advertising assets or attributes. 

Why thousands of routes are listed?

If no filters have been selected, all the markets and routes that you have available on Skyscanner will be listed. To reduce this volume, use the Market and Routes filters. 

How do I search for specific routes?

Use the Market and Route filters to search for specific markets and routes. 

How do I remove filtered data?

Click on the Market or Route buttons. There is a Clear button that will clear all filters allowing you to start again. 

How do I search for all routes from a specific airport?

There is a wildcard search available. Enter your specific airport in the Origin field of the Routes filter and leave the Destination field blank. It will search for all routes from the origin airport. 

What does Total searches mean?

This is the total searches volume over the delivery period duration for the selected market and route combination. 

What is the Previous Ad spend?

The amount spent by the partner is based on the campaign clicks in the previous 30 days.

What does Your SOV mean?

It is the Share of Voice based on the redirects in the previous 30 days. In addition, the Share of Voice is based on all competing partners for a market/route, i.e. they can be either airlines or OTAs. 

What does the Change column mean?

This column shows the Share of Voice change week on week. In addition, it compares the current week's SOV to the previous week's SOV. 

What is SOV rank?

This is your Share of Voice rank based on the current week's Share of Voice compared to the other partner's Share of Voice competing for the same route. 

How do I select routes for an order?

In the Routes tab, there is a column called Add to order. Tick the specific line item to add this route to your order.

What is CPC?

Cost per click is calculated as a moving average of the campaigns ran over the previous 30 days at the market/route/partner level. 

What is the Reach column?

The total number of travellers we estimate are likely to view your ad, based on the targeting and budget applied to your campaign. 

What is Expected clicks?

The total number of clicks you can expect from your campaign based on the audience size and the estimated click-through rate. 

What is an Additional budget?

As a default, Additional budget corresponds to the required budget to capture the entirety of the available clicks. This field is editable. Reducing the additional budget will reduce the estimated clicks. 

What is the Planned clicks column?

Estimated clicks are the estimated paid redirects you will get by running a campaign. It is calculated based on the CTR for ads at the market/route/partner level.

What is Est. SOV impact?

The Estimated Share of Voice change following ad placements at the selected Additional budget.

How do I place an order?

Go to the Your order tab. Any routes you have selected will be displayed here. Once you are happy with the Total budget and selected your Delivery period, click the green Place Order button. There will be a pop-up screen confirming the order has been placed. 

What are the maximum orders I can place?

You can place 1 order a week.

What is the maximum line items I can have on an order?

You can have a maximum of 10 line items in an order. 

As a partner, if I've bought all available clicks in SAM for the next 6 months. Will adding new campaigns at route level not increase the probability of under-delivering or not delivering at all? Even if some clicks become available, surely it won't be much because we have already set up to buy all available clicks?

Even if you buy all available clicks for the next 6 months, you will still be able to target top performing routes, and there may still be opportunities to increase your spend on these routes. 

What is the difference between upsell, upweight and downweight?

Upsell is new money being added, either adding money to an existing line item/order or creating a new line item/order.

Upweight and downweight is moving the investment from one line to another. For example, Line A and Line B have an equal budget of £1,000. However, line A will not deliver its total budget, and Line B looks like it has the capacity for a higher budget. So we remove or downweight Line A's budget and move into Line B, increasing or upweighting the budget. 

If we have 100s of routes on a BAU campaign with AT (autotargeting) on, wouldn't AT automatically assign budgets to top-performing routes? What is the point of getting route recommendations and additional budget for top-performing routes?

BAU autotargeting will predict how many clicks across your routes in a month. So if we had said you would get 30,000 clicks over 30 days, we use pacing to cap the clicks on each day to 1,000 clicks. So if you then log into Campaign Optimiser and notice that three of your routes are tremendous performers, CO will allow you to target these routes and double down on these really popular routes by targeting your spend on them. 

How often is the Campaign Optimiser updated?

The analysis data is updated daily. In addition, the recommendations based on the data are updated weekly. 

How is a Campaign Optimiser order identified in PIO?

When you submit an order in CO to PIO, the custom field 'created from sco' automatically defaults to Yes in both campaigns and line items in PIO. This same field is tagged to CO revenue reporting in Tableau. 

How do you calculate default CPC?

We calculate CPC based on the partner's negotiated rate with the Commercial Manager for inline display products by market. 

What is the CO product ID for Itinerary and Itinerary Plus in PIO?

230775 - Itinerary

230776 - Itinerary Plus

What are the default placements selected in the CO campaign in SAM?

The majority of our partners want their ads to redirect to their site to use 3rd party tracking; therefore, the default placements selected are Desktop and Mobile Web.