Australia — to the United States, it’s the “land down under,” a faraway place on the other side of the globe, filled with creatures, culture and history that can often seem out of reach.
So when Tourism Australia and Virgin Australia wanted to connect with American travelers, they turned to native advertising to bring the fun of a foreign adventure to the forefront, creating a new experience that engaged potential tourists where they felt the most at home.
“Our goal was generating awareness of Australia’s unique vacation experiences and highlighting Virgin Australia as a great way to get there,” Jane Whitehead, Vice President, Americas, Tourism Australia said.
So in June 2017, Tourism Australia teamed up with Oath to launch the “This Time Tomorrow” campaign, a multi-channel endeavor which aimed to show travelers how easy it can be to jet-set around the world and satisfy their wanderlust — all in a day’s time.
“Through various creative and content executions we were able to bring to life the premium flight experiences and memorable adventures that you can have ‘this time tomorrow,’” Whitehead said.
Native advertising is a way for brands to connect with audiences by delivering relevant content through mediums that matter most to them, creating more authentic and relevant experiences that tie into their everyday user habits.
“Consumers look to brands where they can trust the content,” Courtney McKlveen, Head of U.S. Field Sales at Oath, said. “A marketer needs determine where to position….it needs to be relevant to them when aligning with brand solidarity.”
Great content lies at the crux of any successful cross-channel campaign. For Tourism Australia, that meant a blend of strong imagery and storytelling through traditional native ads and “carousel” formats, which allowed users to click through several images at a time — a tactic that can help bolster engagement by inviting viewers to click through and interact with native experiences. Their native strategy, distributed across Oath’s Yahoo Gemini platform, worked alongside their television, search, social, and display campaigns to target different travelers at different times.
“Compelling creative and content are really important at each point in the consumer path, to gain consumers’ attention and interest initially and then to encourage them to take further action to learn more and/or explore offers,” Whitehead said. “Running multiple versions of creative and copy enables you to learn and optimize based on what resonates with your target consumer.”
“Once a consumer gets there, what they experience is critical, especially in a campaign like this cross-channel,” McKlveen added, stressing the need for brands to think about their web experiences on both mobile and desktop.
“Gone are the days where marketers can say “I don’t know about mobile,” McKlveen said.
Throughout the month-long campaign, Tourism Australia saw a threefold increase in website traffic, with 33% longer time-on-site rates on average.
