How people research and book travel online continues to evolve with the proliferation of devices – and understanding the changing habits and behaviors of today’s digitally-savvy travelers is critical for marketers in the industry.
NB This is a viewpoint by Wendy Olson Killion, director of product at Expedia Media Solutions.
Recent studies commissioned by Expedia Media Solutions, the digital marketing arm of Expedia, Inc., and conducted by comScore looked at the role that mobile plays throughout the sales funnel – by analyzing how UK and US travelers interact with multiplatform online travel content across devices and travel planning stages.
Tnooz covered the UK-only aspects of the Expedia/comScore survey in July.
These findings are especially interesting in the context of a recent white-paper from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) which describes the “liquid consumer” – someone who inhabits a complex online ecosystem, taking a myriad of pathways through online content and devices on their way to making a purchase.
Among the findings from the studies:
- The online audience is enormous: 248 million people in the US and 48 million in the UK engage with digital content across all devices.
- Having multiple devices is becoming the norm: 65% of U.S. households have more than three devices, while three out of four British travelers have one of each - a laptop, a smartphone and a tablet.
- Mobile continues to grow: The total UK and US mobile travel audience is slightly larger than that of PC.
The data showed that engagement with online content by today’s typical consumer varies by platform. An especially revealing finding from the survey showed the degree to which mobile – and particularly tablet usage – spikes at the end of the day, during prime-time, between 8 and 10 p.m.
Your target customer may have seen your ad on their mobile during the morning, looked a bit more closely on their desktop during lunch, and then noticed it again while browsing their social media in the afternoon. After dinner, however, they are sitting down with their tablets. While share of device traffic for mobile rests between 3% and 6% throughout the day, it spikes to nearly 12% during prime time.
What can we draw from this?
First, the mobile experience must be efficient, since mobile users spend less time on average engaging with a brand.
Second, marketers need to think of this mobile experience as part of the overall “digital commute” via device/platform by the “liquid consumer.” Ask yourself:
- Is your content specifically optimized for the mobile experience?
- Are you telling a story through your content that works over the course of this day’s journey?
- Can the transaction be booked across all platforms?
We all know that mobile adoption continues to rise steadily. However, as the comScore study shows, consumer behavior within the mobile environment varies. Which device a consumer uses depends not only on time of day but also where they are situated within the marketing funnel.
These are merely a few of the key highlights from the comScore survey.
Travel marketers are invited to a presentation of the entire study at a special webinar hosted by Tnooz on Thursday, October 29 at 11am. EST. Participants will be taken through the research on how travelers in the U.S. and U.K. make their purchasing decisions and engage with travel content across devices.
Please register here for the FREE webinar to help inform how to optimize your strategy for reaching and engaging the evolving multiscreen travel consumer.
NB1 This is a viewpoint by Wendy Olson Killion, director of product at Expedia Media Solutions. It appears here as part of Tnooz's sponsored content initiative.
NB2Image by Shutterstock.