With more than 160 hotels across Israel and Europe, Fattal Hotels wanted to rebrand in the Israeli market and underline their international scope. Focusing on music and visually stunning locations, they created an ad that users would be glad to view and listen to, all while showcasing different Fattal hotels and reinforcing the brand’s cosmopolitan character.
About Fattal Hotels
Israel’s largest hospitality organisation, with 38 hotels and 10,000 rooms
Owns and manages 170 hotels in 17 countries in Europe
Founded: 1998
Headquarters: Tel Aviv
www.fattal-hotels.com
Goals
Rebrand as an international hotel chain
Drive additional site traffic
Increase sales
Approach
Created native YouTube TrueView ad combining music with hotel assets
Used custom intent audiences to reach people on YouTube who had recently searched on Google for the kinds of products that Fattal sells and showed interest in vacations
Used YouTube measurement to fine-tune media budgets mid-flight
Results
25% growth in brand queries
20% increase in ad recall
29% increase in site traffic
33% growth in sales
35% uplift in new users to the site
As well as rebrand as an international hotel chain, Fattal wanted to drive additional traffic to the site and increase sales, so they crafted an ad campaign putting their sumptuous hotel locations front and centre. The campaign proved YouTube’s value as a branding solution, increasing brand queries by 25% and ad recall by 20%. But that’s not all – Fattal also managed to make big gains in performance, increasing site traffic by 29%, boosting new user traffic by 35% and lifting sales by 33%. Here’s how they did it.
“YouTube was the perfect platform for us advertising our hotels chain. With TrueView ads we reached our target audience at the best time, with the right message, to help position our brand in their state of mind. We were able to tailor our campaigns and ads to highlight our unique brand and our strength as an international hotels chain.”
– Nadav Fattal, CMO, Fattal Hotels
“Thanks to the impressive results we've already seen from our YouTube activity, we're committed to an always-on video strategy going forward and transferring budgets from other media sources.”
– Shai Truchman, CDO, Fattal Hotels
Measure and iterate for optimal performance
For their campaign, Fattal used a mix of media that spanned the Google Display Network (25%) and video (75%). Creative solutions used for the display component included Gmail, dynamic, responsive and carousel ads. TrueView ads – which were tailored precisely to suit the unique skippable format – made up the majority of the video activity, while bumper and outstream ads played key roles too. “YouTube was the perfect platform for us advertising our hotels chain”, says CMO Nadav Fattal. “With TrueView ads we reached our target audience at the best time, with the right message, to help position our brand in their state of mind.”
The fact that YouTube is digital and therefore highly measurable helped Fattal fine-tune their media mix even as the activity was up and running. For example, during the course of the campaign, they shifted budgets from other video campaigns to TrueView because it was showing the best results.
Use Google insights to fine-tune YouTube strategy
Fattal showed their ads to audiences over 25 years of age as well as people with an affinity or who were in-market for travel. They also developed remarketing campaigns both on video and the Google Display Network to show their ads to people who had previously interacted with the brand.
One more tactic that helped Fattal ensure their messaging landed on the right eyes and ears were custom intent audiences. By leveraging the use of Google data and tools Fattal were able to move undecided customers to action using the persuasive power of video. Fattal used this capability to reach people on YouTube who had recently searched on Google for the kinds of products they sell. For example, Fattal could show ads on YouTube to people who had recently searched Google for “hotels in Tel Aviv” or “hotels in Berlin”.
Engage the audience to bring the brand to life
A host of engagement metrics demonstrate Fattal’s wisdom in tailoring beautiful creative and reaching the right audience. “With TrueView we were able to tailor our campaigns and ads to highlight our unique brand and our strength as an international hotel chain”, Nadav says. The TrueView ad achieved a view rate above 40% with a 5.7% click-through rate, while the outstream ads had a view rate (for at least 75% of the ad) of 67%. Gmail ads also performed really well with a 4.7% click-through rate. And responsive ads on YouTube drove 45% of all Google Display Network traffic, with a click-through rate of 1%.
Using custom intent audiences was another tactic that really paid off, driving a 52% view rate, which was 30% higher than other audiences. Overall the video activity generated 4.7 million video views, 160,000 clicks to the site and a click-through rate of 3.3%. “Thanks to the impressive results we’ve already seen from our YouTube activity, we’re committed to an always-on video strategy going forward and transferring budgets from other media sources”, says Fattal Hotels CDO Shai Truchman.
