Circling the globe with a first-class experience

People travel from all over the world to experience the world-class cities, natural beauty and traditional customs of Japan. For many, that entails a long trip on an aeroplane—and as they book their flights, one factor that strongly influences their choice is the in-flight experience.

Japan Airlines (JAL) knows how important it is to create a positive experience for passengers and it is committed to their comfort. The airline’s economy seats are among the roomiest in the industry and passengers enjoy exceptional service and hospitality from the moment they step on board.

As a leader in Customer Experience Management (CXM), JAL strives to provide excellent experiences long before passengers board an aeroplane. Often, traveller encounter the brand for the first time through targeted digital advertising.

“As we look to attract more overseas passengers, we rely heavily on advertising to build our brand and drive sales,” says Jonathan Wan, Director of Global Marketing, Media & Social for JAL. “Our long-term strategy is to build our presence in North America as well as the Asia Pacific region, with a focus on Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan.”

Advertising across diverse markets, including Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, can be complicated, especially in countries with less exposure to the JAL brand. JAL must simultaneously increase brand awareness and sell tickets—two distinct types of campaigns that can be difficult to manage at the same time. In addition, the airline works with three agencies, each using a different platform to target overlapping audiences. Given the complexity, JAL didn’t have the visibility to co-ordinate and optimise campaigns effectively.

“We were literally bidding against ourselves in some cases and driving up advertising costs,” says Wan. “We needed one platform to provide full transparency into our advertising campaigns.”

JAL chose Adobe Advertising Cloud DSP (demand-side platform) to bring everything together in a powerful, unified platform—running full-funnel campaigns from awareness to sales with programmatic video and display ads. The solution helps the airline zoom in on its audiences and deliver just the right type of content at the right time.

“JAL works hard to create tailored experiences for passengers during flights,” says Mr Akira Mitsumasu, VP of Global Marketing at JAL. “Adobe Advertising Cloud DSP helps us to bring personalised experiences into the digital realm, reaching traveller across Asia Pacific through more targeted and relevant communication.”\

Maximum visibility for a smooth journey

Advertising Cloud DSP now serves as the standard demand-side platform at JAL, supporting three main campaigns managed by different agencies. One campaign targets people interested in travelling to Japan. Another targets people who might want to fly through Japan on their way to North America. The final campaign promotes JAL business class.

“With Adobe Advertising Cloud DSP, we have a single platform with full transparency into our campaigns,” says Wan.

Cross-channel reporting makes it possible to follow consumers wherever they encounter JAL videos—on specific websites or mobile apps—even as they switch devices. With targeting pixels, JAL can look beyond simple click-through data to get a more complete view of how individual tactics influence future sales.

“With targeting pixels and cross-channel reporting, we can measure our media buys more accurately and allocate our budget more effectively, so we can focus on tactics that produce results,” Wan says.

JAL makes sure its agencies stay aligned with standardised metrics and reporting and Adobe helped put the foundation in place.

“The Adobe Advertising Cloud team played an instrumental role in training our agencies and scheduling reports that have consistent metrics,” Wan says. “This makes it much easier for us to compare results and demonstrate the benefits of programmatic advertising.”

One of those benefits is cost savings. After using Advertising Cloud for six months, JAL saw a 32% decrease in cost per acquisition for programmatic video and display campaigns.

Welcoming more passengers onboard

With the ability to plan and optimise its media buys in one place, JAL has already made significant gains in advertising performance. Using the Performance Optimisation and Viewability Optimisation features, powered by Adobe Sensei, Adobe’s artificial intelligence and machine learning technology, the airline has a clearer understanding of where to place its ad dollars for optimal impact.

“Thanks to the Advertising Cloud DSP optimisation capabilities powered by Adobe Sensei, we saw an 81% increase in viewability rates and more than doubled our click-through rates,” says Wan. “Those improvements are crucial as we build awareness with newer audiences and encourage them to choose us for their next flights.”

Audience deduplication plays an important role in reaching people effectively. Using suppression pixels through Advertising Cloud DSP, JAL can identify people who have already been targeted with an ad and suppress further impressions.

“By suppressing ads for duplicate audiences, we’ve saved nearly $32,000 and provided a better experience for our audience,” Wan says.

JAL also sees enormous value in the ability to make private marketplace deals through Advertising Cloud DSP premium inventory management. Local offices often rely on specific channels to reach local audiences and Advertising Cloud gives them the flexibility to buy premium, on-demand inventory and manage it as an integrated part of the overarching campaign.

In addition, the platform’s brand safety tools allow JAL to exercise control over ad placement and brand integrity. As Wan explains, “With Adobe Advertising Cloud, we can see all the panels and sites where our ads appear, which helps us to make sure our ads appear on sites that align with our brand.”

Marketing prepares for take-off

As its optimised advertising strategy drives more traffic to the website, JAL is turning its attention to the digital experiences it serves up once visitors arrive on the site.

“The website experience is an essential element in the customer journey, which is why we are kicking off a project to implement Adobe Experience Manager,” says Wan. “We aim to create synergy between the website and Adobe Advertising Cloud, bringing people in and leading them seamlessly to booking travel with us.”

The airline is also considering using Advertising Cloud Creative as data and content become increasingly important in its marketing strategy. With a tight integration between ad campaigns and creative tools such as Adobe Photoshop, JAL hopes to empower agencies to quickly generate more personalised creative content—using messaging trees to send the right ads to the right people.

“We opted for Adobe Advertising Cloud because we saw the potential benefits of future integration within the full Adobe solution stack,” Wan says. “Integration with Adobe Creative Cloud is already a big part of our strategy moving forward because content and messaging have such a powerful influence on brand awareness and sales.”

Adobe plays an important role in helping JAL continue to excel at CXM by offering solutions and partnership to help the airline provide excellent experiences at every point in the customer journey. The airline sees this relationship as a crucial element in its overall digital transformation.

“At the moment, digital marketing at JAL is at an exciting turning point, where digital transformation is essential for delivering more personalised experiences,” says Wan. “Adobe is a strong technology partner helping us to transform at our own pace, bringing immediate results and setting us up for future success.”

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