U.S. Travel Ad Spending Plunges 90 Percent in March
Photo Credit: Anthem of the Seas. The ships owner Royal Caribbean Cruises had a record year in 2019 but has had to sharply pull back on advertising due to the coronavirus crisis. Royal Caribbean / Eric Kilby
Skift Take
Quarantines and lockdowns are driving huge spikes in online traffic, and digital marketing may be more effective than ever when the crisis ends. In the meantime, ad tech companies need to prove their worth by helping suppliers plan how to re-activate their marketing campaigns at the right time — and in the best ways.
It's no surprise that travel companies pulled back on their marketing as the coronavirus crisis unfolded. But new data gives color to the picture.
Cruise lines slashed their ad spending the most among travel categories. Between January and the first week of February, cruise lines spent between $12 million and $15 million a week on advertising. But they slashed spending by roughly 90 percent. Cruise companies were spending only about $1.2 million a week by the last two weeks of March, according to ad sales intelligence company MediaRadar.
Airlines were the next toughest in their cuts, trimming spending by about a third, compared to a year earlier. Airlines had boosted their ad spending to $23.4 million between February 10 and March 10, up from $8.3 million in the same period last year, said ad tech firm Pathmatics. But carriers slashed that spending to about $1 million a week by the end of March. Airlines were all but abs
