Dive Brief:
- Home-sharing service Airbnb tested three days of 360-degree video "tours" on Twitter and Periscope over the weekend, according to Adweek. The effort followed Toyota's success with the format at CES last week.
- "Tours" have multiple international stops beginning with targeting travelers interested in visiting Hawaii and Detroit, and featuring a London-based video on how to prepare a Cameroonian feast.
- "What's unique about bringing Airbnb experiences and homes onto the live space on Twitter and Periscope is that we're able to bring people together," Jasmine Atherton, Airbnb's head of social, Americas, told Adweek. "Airbnb was built on creating meaningful connections with people and having deeply local experiences — live 360 video is a perfect way to bring that to people no matter where they are."
Dive Insight:
Video has shown itself to be one of the most powerful and engaging content mediums, particularly for mobile campaigns, and 360-degree views bring an extra level of novelty and immersive user experience to those efforts that plays well for fields like travel. Brands such as Taco Bell and Lowe’s have been using 360-degree video to successfully reach audiences on Twitter and Facebook, per Adweek, and Airbnb's new "tours" efforts are already garnering hundreds of thousands of views.
Live on #Periscope360: a house tour of an amazing Airbnb in Kauai. Move your phone to look around. https://t.co/b47KHblfhV
— Airbnb (@Airbnb) January 7, 2017
Airbnb has been active in marketing innovation and building out its core service of late, making it one of the most impressive and robust digital players at the moment. The company has expanded well beyond its early days of simple home-sharing, setting up a Trips platform for more comprehensive travel planning, including Experiences and Places, late last year. It was also recently reported that Airbnb is dabbling in the flight-booking business, although the feature is still in early planning stages and how it will actually look and operate remains unclear.
Live 360 on Twitter, introduced late last year, is already shaping up to be a hit with brands as well, even against stiff competition such as Facebook's offering of the same name. Live video has been one of Twitter's biggest plays at righting an otherwise sinking ship and will likely continue to be so as more major media partners sign exclusive streaming deals with the platform.
