WTM 2017: Bd4travel retargeting aims to help firms retake control over their data

Tech offers insights into who is worth targeting and how much to bid Continue reading →

Bd4travel has developed new retargeting technology designed to give travel clients some control over their Google advertising.

The personalisation and predictive analytics specialist says the technology will give users insight into who it is worth targeting and how much to bid for them on the leading search engine.

Andy Owen-Jones, founder and chief executive of bd4travel, said the firm has analysed billions of online interactions and now has detailed insight into buyer behaviour.

“Google really wants people to do things that really perform well,” he said. “They are helping us target the right lists.

“Clients want some sort of control over this. We are trying to help them create the fightback and control their own data.

“We can segment in terms of what the audience is potentially worth, what’s the potential spend either now or as lifetime value.

“We have profiled now about 800 million users and built this massive knowledge based driven by probability.”

Bd4travel is working on the retargeting technology with a German tour operator customer before rolling it out more widely.

Profiles can be uploaded to Google Adwords and travel firms can automatically set who to target and what to target them with.

“You can target the top 10% based on who is most likely to make a booking with the things they are most likely to want based in what they have done on the site not just the last thing they looked at.

“When you know this is when to target those people and this is what to target them with you can double or triple your bid.”

Owen-Jones said bd4travel is striving to achieve a Netflix-type experience in travel where automated recommendations are surfaced to users.

Personalised landing pages are developed to match the online DNA of the customer and product is promoted in the right order for that individual user.

In order to optimise conversions firms can then target the people most likely to convert with a time sensitive voucher or online chat engagement with contact centre agents able to access client data.

As voice interfaces develop bd4travel will look to use its database of customer knowledge and Artificial Intelligence to replicate the sort of experience customer get face-to-face in stores.

“At the moment we are training a new interface so you can ask it questions,” said Own-Jones. “If you go into a travel shop someone will respond to you, no website can do that, all you can do is filter.

“Most AI Alexa stuff is really voice-activated search. We want to get more intuitive than that. You can get a chat function from almost anywhere, we want to put our knowledge base behind it.

“In the background, as we answer questions we are building knowledge of the user, pulling out what attributes are most important to them, and then we can give people their own profile.

“It will be like a credit score which they can fine tune it by telling us that’s not exactly what I was looking for.”