Kayak launched its all-important TV ad campaign Sunday, Nov. 1, and Hitwise tells me that Kayak's traffic increased 3% in the first three days compared with the Sunday, Monday and Tuesday of the previous week.
The first three days obviously won't tell the story of what, for Kayak, is a massive ad spend and marketing gamble.
Forbes says Kayak plans to spend "most" of its $60 million ad budget offline to get more brand recognition from the 68% of U.S. online travel planners who don't have Kayak on their radar.
Kayak CEO Steve Hafner told me recently that Kayak "significantly reduced" its SEM (search engine marketing) through Google in early August, "which dropped our traffic from them but had no impact on our search volumes."
When asked about the Hitwise data showing a 3% lift in traffic in the Sunday to Tuesday period, compared with the same three days a week earlier, Hafner says that's "understated."
Hafner adds: "The true measure of lift isn't total traffic but source of traffic (self, affiliate, paid search). You might consider that we could pull back in one channel to see the effects of another."
Without Kayak's internal data, it is difficult to gauge what the 3% uptick -- or more, if it truly is understated, as Hafner says -- means.
At any rate, three days is just a blip of time in an ongoing campaign.
One advertising exec tells me that it is still too early to tell whether that lift was directly caused by the TV ads or by other factors.
It's too soon to tell whether there is a discernible and sustainable pattern.
But, the advertising exec says 3% is interesting, especially since there usually is a substantial decline in travel industry Web traffic in the fourth quarter because of seasonal factors.
Plus, the advertising exec notes, if Kayak reduced its marketing in some channels prior to launching the TV ads, then the lift from the ads may be considerably larger.
Kayak's looking for a big lift, but the jury's still out on whether it will happen.