Canada Mountain Holidays kicks off 360-degree ads for winter adventure travel

Brief:

Canada Mountain Holidays (CMH) debuted 360-degree video ads to promote its skiing and hiking trips that include a helicopter drop-off, according to an announcement shared with Mobile Marketer.
The vacation company's virtual reality (VR) videos display mountain views, helicopter rides and skiing at its Cariboos Lodge that users can get a more immersive view of by rotating their phones or dragging their desktop cursor. The websites of The New York Times, USA Today, Expedia and Kayak are hosting the 360-video ads to target adventure travelers.
CMH worked with OmniVirt to develop the immersive ads. The tech company has previously created 360-degree video ad campaigns for other travel promotion agencies such as Visit Pittsburgh, TravelNevada and Go Hawaii.

Insight:

CMH's 360-degree video effort may help to boost brand awareness and sales around the holiday travel season. The immersive views of breathtaking landscapes will likely engage audiences and appeal to millennials interested in adventure travel when seeking authentic experiences to share on social media.

OmniVirt research shows that its immersive ads see a fourfold increase in click-through rate (CTR) and a video completion rate that's 46% higher than standard two-dimensional ads. These results point to why more brands this year are increasingly adding 360-videos and other immersive ad creative to their marketing mix to better engage consumers that are growing increasingly fatigued by traditional ads.

The travel company is among the advertisers that have run 360-degree video ads to immerse viewers in a virtual landscape and more strongly resonate with audiences. The ads that Omnivirt developed for TravelNevada's "Don't Fence Me In" campaign spurred a 1% CTR, compared with the industry average 0.15% for travel ads measured by Google's Rich Media Gallery. Users spent an average of 60 seconds with the immersive ad. These results demonstrate how advertisers can boost engagement with creative content that cuts through the clutter of traditional static ads.

Immersive content, including 360-degree video, give users more control of their experiences than when viewing a standard ad to learn about a brand. With last year's rollout of AR development kits from Apple, Google, Facebook and Snapchat, brands are increasingly adding the tech to their marketing arsenal.