Tealium + Meta Help TUI Future Proof Social Ad Spend

The TUI Group has over 100 years’ experience, with their roots stretching back to the 1800s. With over 20 million global customers and 67,000 travel experts, they offer a variety of holidays, short breaks and excursions to 180 worldwide destinations. As the No.1 travel company it’s TUI’s mission to help their customers to ‘Discover their smile’.

Challenge:
Increase resilience against the loss of third-party cookies. Solidify data collection methods to retain effectiveness and insight. Better tracking and uplifts from an exceptional customer experience while honouring all customer preferences.

Solution:
Introduce the Meta server side Conversion API (CAPI), to ensure the supply of insight via Tealium EventStream. Optimise ad spend through Facebook, with improvement in attribution, media suppression, and improved look-a-like targeting in the platform.

Results:
After using the Facebook Conversion API, cost per booking dropped by 6%. Conversion rate for social traffic across the platform increased by an impressive 29% and TUI’s return on ad spend increased by a significant 18%.

Volkan Özturan, Team Analytics Digital Commerce, Berlin TUI GROUP “Like the majority of brands, the loss of third party cookie data is something we’re really conscious of, and looking to mitigate as soon as we can. Moving our data collection from client-side to server-side has set us up brilliantly for the eventual loss of that data. Introducing the Meta Conversion API has helped us not only use our advertising budget more effectively, targeting the right customers, but also increased the number of customers who convert via these ads to make a booking. The essential measurement for us, the return on investment of that ad spend, has increased by 18% since the introduction of the Meta Conversion API. We’re looking forward to expanding our use of this tool, not only focusing on the conversion event but using that server-side data to deliver an outstanding customer experience via relevant, useful and timely remarketing ads.”

Cookie Apocalypse Incoming!

As a longstanding Tealium customer, TUI were rightly concerned about the imminent loss of third party cookies, given the changing landscape related to regulation, browser policies and consumer preferences, that would reduce the effectiveness and insight from their current (client side) data collection methods.

By sending the data server side, it reduces the impact of ever-changing browser policies while still honouring a consumer’s consent preferences. This results in improved data getting to marketing and advertising technologies, which in turn improves downstream results. With better access to data for attribution, brands get, at even a basic level, better return on ad spend and higher conversion rates.

TUI needed resilience in collecting this essential conversion data, and decided to introduce the Facebook server side Conversion API (CAPI), to ensure the supply of this insight via Tealium EventStream. TUI’s goal was to see better tracking, leading to uplifts in results for partners like Trivago and Tripadvisor, which had already shifted their data tracking server side. They also wanted to see higher marketing efficiency, i.e. lower costs and increased conversions.

Shift from Third-Party to First-Party Data

By moving away from the reliance on third party cookies, to collecting first party data, TUI immediately saw increased volume and accuracy of tracking data, greater insight and improved customer experience through faster page load times. Use of the Meta Conversion API (CAPI) drove a noticeable increase in booking conversions and reduction in cost.

Increased data accuracy led to increased targeted segmentation based on the customers behaviours. Due to better and more comprehensive data collection and accuracy TUI were able to optimise their ad spend through Facebook, with improvement in attribution, media suppression, and improved look-a-like targeting in the platform.

Let’s Talk Results…

After using the Meta Conversion API, TUI saw their cost per booking drop by 6%. Their conversion rate for social traffic across the platform increased by an impressive 29% and their Return on Investment (with ‘investment’ in this case being TUI’s directly attributable ad spend) increased by a significant 18%.

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