Travel means something unique to each of us.  It’s whatever floats your boat, flies your plane, runs your car.. you get the drift!

For travel apps, this is an opportunity to understand the diverse motivations that drive each user and craft distinctive ads for them. But In a world packed with choices, how can your travel app truly shine and serve each user exactly what they’re after?

Programmatic advertising and dynamic personalization are two pillars that can transform how you connect and converse with your users.

In this blog, we look at dynamic personalization, DCO Ads, and the endless possibilities they hold for your travel app.

Dynamic personalization as a differentiator: to each their own

The travel apps vertical is fiercely competitive! And amid this hustle and bustle, differentiation is no easy feat. There’s not much difference between your airline app’s offerings and that of your competitors.

From a user’s perspective, it’s often a pick-and-choose game where loyalty and prices matter most. Unless you can do one thing better than anyone else: read minds.. with a little help from in-app data.

What if you could be that travel companion who anticipates needs even before they’re expressed? What if your ads showed each user exactly what they need to see? Of course, the real catch lies in driving this kind of personalization at scale, which sounds daunting at first. 

That’s where dynamic personalization comes in. It’s what enables your app to deliver the right ad to the right person and at the right time, at scale, with ease.

DCO ads: your door to effortless personalization

Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO) goes way beyond standard ad campaigns. It taps into vast amounts of user data and feeds data to smartly recommend the right message and offers to each user.

Example of DCO ads for travel apps

Click to open the full-scale version

Here’s how it works: Demand-side Platforms (DSPs) or Creative Management Platforms (CMPs) create customizable templates with various moving parts, offering a framework for hyper-personalized ads.

These templates adapt automatically, ensuring users see the most relevant content.

What DCO ads can do for your travel app

Seasonal Promotions:

Travel apps operate in a highly seasonal industry, and each season brings its unique set of user preferences and expectations. The challenge lies in seamlessly personalizing the ad experience to align with these diverse seasons.

This is what a typical personalization process would look like

User segments: 5 distinct user segments. (say, budget-conscious travelers, high-frequency users, business travallers, almost-churning users, and last-minute travellers)

Ad variations: 3 variations for each of the 5 user segments = 15 unique ad sets.

Seasons: 3 different seasons. (Holidays, Summer, Monsoon)

Locations: Customize each of the 15 ad sets for 3 locations = 45 unique ad sets.

Offers: Furthermore variations with 3 different offers  

15 ad variations (user segments) x 3 seasons x 3 locations x 3 budget options = 405 unique ad sets.

And that’s just the beginning. You now have to test what works, optimize, and repeat for every segment and every season. Phew!

DCO automates all of this within your existing template framework. It enables you to dynamically adapt to the ever-changing seasons and deliver personalized ad for each user effortlessly.

In conclusion

There’s immense potential that dynamic personalization holds for your app. Surprisingly, most players in the travel vertical aren’t fully leveraging this, at least not yet. See how you can seize this opportunity.

Read the full blog here!