Skift Take
The impact of Airbnb's new ad campaign seems to be underwhelming to date. But if the idea is to broaden awareness about hosting, Airbnb may be willing to play the long game.
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During the first month of Airbnb's new global marketing campaign, which includes tens of millions of dollars worth of TV commercials it is running in five markets, the effort didn't significantly boost its global website traffic.
ISpot.tv, a television analytics firm, estimated that Airbnb has spent about $14 million so far on TV commercials for the campaign in the U.S. alone.
Does the lack of a spectacular boost from the advertising blitz, which began February 22 and includes digital advertising around the world, make it a bust?
Skift asked traffic analytics firm SimilarWeb to track Airbnb's desktop and mobile traffic during the period of the active advertising campaign globally, and in the five markets where the TV ads are running, namely the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada. See the traffic numbers in the following chart.
Source: SimilarWeb
While Airbnb's website traffic globally rose 5.7 percent to around 5.5 million during the campaign's first month, according to SimilarWeb's numbers, the increase wasn't significant in the context of Airbnb's overall traffic increases in recent months, the advent of Covid vaccinations, t