Black Friday is the biggest sales event of the year and Etihad Airways, the UAE’s national airline, wanted to build on the momentum of its 2022 Black Friday Sale. For 2023, the task was to increase pre-sale subscriptions to 12K, bookings by 15% and digital revenue by 15%. This would be a multi-channel campaign across Google, Meta, TikTok, display and Paid Search with 2 phases: Awareness for 3 weeks and Conversion for 4 days. The challenge was that the most popular shopping categories were TVs, laptops, refrigerators, phones and appliances (Google US). Airline tickets just weren’t a part of the consideration set, despite being a high-value item and travel being a key event for consumers.

We partnered with Google and found a data insight that sale research begins way before Black Friday, with 70% of shopping-related searches starting as early as October. This was our opportunity.

Our idea was that these dream products were available in the destinations we fly to, so why not make the ultimate travel suggestion to deal-seeking shoppers? Our hyper-personalised ads suggested they fly to buy them in a relevant destination, with the money they'd save on our discounted fares. Want an iPhone… why not fly to New York and buy it there? New purse… how about Paris?

That was our big idea. Turning shoppers into passengers.

We created a customisable YouTube pre-roll for multiple audience profiles that was adapted for each product and destination, in 4 different languages, in every combination, for a total of 2400 hyper-personalised travel suggestions.

According to Google US data, in 2022, 70% of shopping-related search volume containing “Black Friday” happened as early as October and in the days leading up to the sale day itself. These are deliberate deal seekers who do their research and are ready to pounce when the price is right. So much so that 85% of shoppers who plan to shop online, typically have tabs open when waiting for sales to begin.

We had to choose the broader categories that shoppers were in-market for, like smartphones, gaming, gadgets, electronics, appliances, fashion, shoes and beauty products.

What makes this campaign unique is that for the first time, an airline used interest for consumer products to sell destinations instead.

We targeted InMarket Audiences in 10 countries by product and destination, covering both sides of the spectrum. We used YouTube for Action tools to drive conversions on our landing page. In the Awareness phase (3 weeks), we drove people to our landing page to check out the fares. We also ran a Subscription campaign on Meta in 20 countries to notify shoppers when the sale starts and remind them when it ends. This would add new names to our CRM database.

We created a customisable YouTube pre-roll for multiple audience profiles that was adapted for each product and destination, in 4 different languages, in every combination, for a total of 2400 hyper-personalised travel suggestions.

The campaign outperformed on every metric.

Campaign CTR soared to 219% above benchmark (Google).

24K new Pre-sale subscriptions led to a 33% increase in the CRM database for future campaigns, and 1.8M website visits resulted in a 56% increase YOY in Bookings.

The 32% Promo code uptake was 28% over the Average Promo code uptake YOY.

Furthermore, Digital Revenue was up by 35% YOY and Digital Share of Revenue increased from 34% to 46% YOY.

We also achieved the highest-ever revenue coming from Paid Search in a single day, +60% YOY.

ROAS was +69% YOY but the biggest achievement was the highest revenue from a digital sale in the airline’s 20-year history, which surpassed the previous record by 48%.

Even though this was a tactical campaign, it created a spill-over effect; Etihad Airways brand lift increased in key markets: Canada +53% | US +37% | UK +16% | Australia +41%