Online marketing in

tourism
Marketing in tourism
Poenaru Alexandru Cristian

Online advertising, also called online marketing or Internet advertising, is a

form of marketing and advertising which uses the Internet to
deliver promotional marketing messages to consumers.
Online advertising is a large business and is growing rapidly. In 2011, Internet
advertising revenues in the United States surpassed those of cable television and
nearly exceeded those of broadcast television. In 2012, Internet advertising revenues in
the United States totaled $36.57 billion, a 15.2% increase over the $31.74 billion in
revenues in 2011. U.S. internet ad revenue hit a historic high of $20.1 billion for the first
half of 2013, up 18% over the same period in 2012. Online advertising is widely used
across virtually all industry sectors.
Many common online advertising practices are controversial and increasingly
subject to regulation. Online ad revenues may not adequately replace other publishers'
revenue streams. Declining ad revenue has led some publishers to hide their content
behind paywalls.

Delivery methods:

1. Email advertising is ad copy comprising an entire email or a portion of an email

message. Email marketing may be unsolicited, in which case the sender may
give the recipient an option to opt-out of future emails, or it may be sent with the
recipient's prior consent (opt-in).
2. Yet another but important and crucial marketing trend that has brought a huge
aberration in our society.Blogger was launched in 1999 by three friends. Blogging
as an ardent marketing tool has really blossomed in the last years. Businesses,
companies and even superstar now use blogging system for huge promotion.
3. Pay per click (PPC), also called cost per click, is an internet advertising model
used to direct traffic to websites, in which advertisers pay the publisher (typically
a website owner) when the ad is clicked. It is defined simply as the amount
spent to get an advertisement clicked.
4. Social media marketing is commercial promotion conducted through social
media websites. Many companies promote their products by posting frequent
updates and providing special offers through their social media profiles.
5. Digital marketing is marketing that makes use of electronic devices (computers)
such as personal computers, smartphones, cellphones, tablets and game
consoles to engage with stakeholders. Digital marketing applies technologies or
platforms such as websites, e-mail, apps (classic and mobile) and social
networks.

6. Viral marketing, viral advertising, or marketing buzz are buzzwords referring

to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networking services and
other technologies to try to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve
other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through selfreplicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of viruses or computer
viruses.

Benefits of online advertising

Cost
The low costs of electronic communication reduce the cost of displaying online
advertisements compared to offline ads. Online advertising, and in particular social
media, provides a low-cost means for advertisers to engage with large established
communities. Advertising online offers better returns than in other media.

Measurability
Online advertisers can collect data on their ads' effectiveness, such as the size of
the potential audience or actual audience response, how a visitor reached their
advertisement, whether the advertisement resulted in a sale, and whether an ad actually
loaded within a visitor's view. This helps online advertisers improve their ad campaigns
over time.

Formatting
Advertisers have a wide variety of ways of presenting their promotional
messages, including the ability to convey images, video, audio, and links. Unlike many
offline ads, online ads also can be interactive. For example, some ads let users input
queries or let users follow the advertiser on social media. Online ads can even
incorporate games.

Targeting

Publishers can offer advertisers the ability to reach customizable and narrow
market segments for targeted advertising. Online advertising may use geo-targeting to
display relevant advertisements to the user's geography. Advertisers can customize
each individual ad to a particular user based on the user's previous
preferences. Advertisers can also track whether a visitor has already seen a particular
ad in order to reduce unwanted repetitious exposures and provide adequate time gaps
between exposures.

Coverage
Online advertising can reach nearly every global market, and online advertising
influences offline sales.

Speed
Once ad design is complete, online ads can be deployed immediately. The
delivery of online ads does not need to be linked to the publisher's publication schedule.
Furthermore, online advertisers can modify or replace ad copy more rapidly than their
offline counterparts.

Concerns
Banner blindness

Eye-tracking studies have shown that Internet users often ignore web page
zones likely to contain display ads (sometimes called "banner blindness"), and this
problem is worse online than in offline media. On the other hand, studies suggest that
even those ads "ignored" by the users may influence the user subconsciously.

Fraud on the advertiser

There are numerous ways that advertisers can be overcharged for their
advertising. For example, click fraud occurs when a publisher or third parties click
(manually or through automated means) on a CPC ad with no legitimate buying intent.

For example, click fraud can occur when a competitor clicks on ads to deplete its rival's
advertising budget, or when publishers attempt to manufacture revenue.
Click fraud is especially associated with pornography sites. In 2011, certain
scamming porn websites launched dozens of hidden pages on each visitor's computer,
forcing the visitor's computer to click on hundreds of paid links without the visitor's
knowledge.
As with offline publications, online impression fraud can occur when publishers
overstate the number of ad impressions they have delivered to their advertisers. To
combat impression fraud, several publishing and advertising industry associations are
developing ways to count online impressions credibly.

Anti-targeting technologies
Some web browsers offer privacy modes where users can hide information about
themselves from publishers and advertisers. Among other consequences, advertisers
can't use cookies to serve targeted ads to private browsers. Most major browsers have
incorporated Do Not Track options into their browser headers, but the regulations
currently are only enforced by the honor system.

Privacy concerns

The collection of user information by publishers and advertisers has raised

consumer concerns about their privacy. Sixty percent of Internet users would use Do
Not Track technology to block all collection of information if given an opportunity. Over
half of all Google and Facebook users are concerned about their privacy when using
Google and Facebook, according to Gallup.
Many consumers have reservations about by online behavioral targeting. By
tracking users' online activities, advertisers are able to understand consumers quite
well. Advertisers often use technology, such as web bugs and respawning cookies, to
maximizing their abilities to track consumers. According to a 2011 survey conducted by
Harris Interactive, over half of Internet users had a negative impression of online

behavioral advertising, and forty percent feared that their personally-identifiable

information had been shared with advertisers without their consent. Consumers can be
especially troubled by advertisers targeting them based on sensitive information, such
as financial or health status.

Trustworthiness of advertisers

Scammers can take advantage of consumers' difficulties verifying an online

persona's identity, leading to artifices like phishing (where scam emails look identical to
those from a well-known brand owner) and confidence schemes like the Nigerian "419"
scam. The Internet Crime Complaint Center received 289,874 complaints in 2012,
totaling over half a billion dollars in losses, most of which originated with scam ads.
Consumers also face malware risks when interacting with online
advertising. Cisco's 2013 Annual Security Report revealed that clicking on ads was 182
times more likely to install a virus on a user's computer than surfing the Internet for
porn.

Spam

The Internet's low cost of disseminating advertising contributes to spam,

especially by large-scale spammers. Numerous efforts have been undertaken to combat
spam, ranging from blacklists to regulatorily-required labeling to content filters, but most
of those efforts have adverse collateral effects, such as mistaken filtering.

Most important web platforms for online marketing:

1. Booking.com is an online booking website started as a small start-up
in Enschede in 1996 (home of the University of Twente), based in Amsterdam,

Netherlands and since 2005 owned and operated by United States

based Priceline. Has over 540,000 properties globally under contract. Deals with
more than 700,000 room nights reservations per day.
They dont charge a booking fee to customers, but charges commission on
bookings to accommodation partners.
2. Facebook (formerly [thefacebook]) is an online social networking
service headquartered in Menlo Park, California. Has over 1.3 billion active
users as of June 2014.
3. Twitter is an online social networking service that enables users to send and
read short 140-character messages called "tweets". 80% of users are on their
mobiles.
Has been described as "the SMS of the Internet."
4. TripAdvisor is an American travel website providing reviews of travel-related
content. It also includes interactive travel forums.
TripAdvisor was an early adopter of user-generated content.
The website services are free to users, who provide most of the content, and the
website is supported by an advertising business model
5. Flickr (pronounced "flicker") is an image hosting and video hosting website,
and web services suite that was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and acquired
by Yahoo in 2005. Has a total of 87 million registered members and more than
3.5 million new images uploaded daily.
Has a total of 87 million registered members and more than 3.5 million new
images uploaded daily.
6. YouTube is a video-sharing website headquartered in San Bruno, California.
Over 6 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube.
YouTube is the second largest search engine after Google (bigger than Bing,
Yahoo!, and Ask combined).
7. Pinterest is a web and mobile application company that offers a visual discovery,
collection, sharing, and storage tool. Users save and share pins from multiple
resources onto boards based on a plethora of criteria, e.g., similar
characteristics, a theme, birthday parties, planning a vacation.
Pinterest generates its first revenue this year, when it begins charging advertisers
to promote their wares to the site's millions of hobbyists, vacation planners, and
do-it-yourselfers.

Advantages of social media:

1. Social media works in a real time situations.

2. Where the social media covers a wide range of possibility and audiences
3. Social media in tourism is a creative way to allow the people to give ideas
4. Social media had become a great extent alternative to word-of-mouth advertising

Disadvantages of social media:

1. Publishing obvious advertising copy is unacceptable in the social media world
2. Every post on twitter is public and user has no control over what people say.
3. Bad news go viral as easily as good news and can do unethical business
irreparable harm.
4. Social media can be both an aid and a threat

Example: InterContinental Hotels Group:

They were an early adopter of social media.
Began producing high quality concierge-hosted destination videos.
In 2010 it launched a concierge iPad app.
274,759 likes on Facebook.
83,300 followers on Twitter.
They are very well viewed on Flickr, Pinterest and TripAdvisor.
They are active on Youtube and have over 330,000 views.

Results:
1. Fee revenue increase by 6.8%
2. RevPAR grew(revenue per available room) by over 5%, generating revenue of
$1.8 billion
3. 10% increase in operating profit