Current situation around Branded Entertainment: The UK’s regulatory body for branded content is OFCOM. OFCOM was set up as an EU initiative; however the UK has traditionally been stricter than other member states in the application of these rules.

We created 22 tactical pre-roll films for YouTube. Each was set in an exotic destination and featured a different character who disrupted people’s viewing habits and surprised them with a targeted message that took note of the time, the day of the week or the actual content selected by the viewers – and encouraged them to start exploring the world outside.

Our pre-roll films got over 4.2 million views. Of these, 36% were organic, which doubled our expected views and halved our cost per view from the industry standard of £0.06 to £0.03. Overall, we saw an increase of Expedia’s share of travel market internet traffic by 18% during the activation period.