AIR FRANCE CASE

1. Should Media Contacts recommend a uniform strategy for Air France across search
engine publishers? Or would it be more effective to tailor each publisher strategy to
maximize return on investment?

The best search marketing plan, according to the instance, is based on picking good keywords
and bid techniques for placement on the search result page for Internet users, as well as
determining effective ad budget allocation across the major search engines. The case provides
background information on the airline sector and the Internet search choices accessible at the
time, including Google, Microsoft MSN, Yahoo!, and Kayak, to help determine the best method.
In addition, background information on search engine marketing (SEM) and its associated
expenses and methods of measuring the performance of each marketing activity is supplied.
Exhibit 6 featured line item information for keywords and keyword groups for each campaign
and search engine, implying that methods change slightly amongst search engines, even though
they all operate on similar principles at a high level.
In another scenario, the author claims that purchasers who use search engines to find information
are more likely to trust and click on links in the editorial portion of the search results page. On
the other hand, most online retailers do not invest in search engine optimization (SEO) to
improve the visibility of their listings in search results, preferring instead to pay for paid
placements.
They argue that SEO is more expensive than paid placements, that the outcomes do not always
justify the expense, and that it does not always result in high search-results rankings. It means
that if SEO were less expensive and its ranks were more constant, sellers would invest in it. Even
if SEO and sponsored placement were the same prices and SEO always resulted in high levels,
paid placement would still be the preferred search engine marketing (SEM) technique for most
online retailers. Surprisingly, SEO is not part of any optimal SEM plan.
These findings are significant for advertising executives who must justify investing in sponsored
placements in the face of overwhelming evidence that purchasers ignore them and instead click
on links in the editorial portion of the search results page. We may isolate and segregate factors
in the PivotTable to better understand the impact and income effect that different publishers have
on facilitating Air France ticket sales.
We can observe that each publisher has their specific benefits by putting their name in the
'Column Labels,' with 'Campaign' and 'Keyword' as row labels, and 'Average of Return on Dollar
Spent' as a column label. Customers browsing for western European destination results, for
example, found "flights to Florence" had a 1572 percent return on Google, but no such effect on
Yahoo. Any dollar spent linking 'European airlines' to sales on Google, on the other hand, was a
waste of money, but Yahoo had a return on investment of 1424 percent.
 2. How can campaigns be improved to increase the overall value gained from
investment with a search engine publisher? Should keywords be added or dropped
from the campaign? Should campaign tactics or copy be adjusted to improve
campaign performance?

To optimise a sponsored campaign, one or more of the following performance metrics had to be
improved: cost-per-click reduction, increase in bookings, net revenue, and revenue per
transaction, return per transaction, and overall performance by the engine, or other performance
metrics that could improve a campaign's net income. We need to learn how to maximize net
revenue and return on investment (ROI) from its Internet marketing initiatives by assessing
alternative techniques. We must also constantly strive to improve our online performance by
employing inventive thinking and testing new ideas.
The quality of analysis and reporting we get from them is critical to our company's long-term
development. Air France must target and pay for the most effective keywords on each site,
especially in the increasingly saturated airline business and the rise of travel aggregators. We
may deduce that geographically focused marketing is sensitive to specific cities and thus
destinations in France from the data. This information not only reveals which regions frequent
certain French towns, but it should also be used to develop dynamic pricing.
Pricing depending on the city where the search was conducted should be very close to the airport
from which someone departs on AirFrance. This should undoubtedly be taken a step further and
executed on a publisher-by-publisher basis. Because different sites have different intrinsic
benefits, keywords (including city names and terms like "cheap" or "international") should be
used on a case-by-case basis, depending on the order of the search results or the bid strategy.
This is an unrealistic viewpoint.
However, the extra effort would be well worth the initial expenditure to identify those marketing
initiatives that contribute to Air France's online traffic and the facilitation of ticket sales.
According to calculations, just 322 of 4,510 keyword searches across several platforms yielded a
positive return on investment. We can see that this cost model for advertising will stay effective
in the long run, given the strong total returns across all websites.
When bidding on meaningless words is eliminated. However, we can raise margins even more by
reducing our own spending when bidding for terms and increasing the costs of advertising for
our competitors.
3. What are the most important KPIs, and what impact will campaign changes have on
these KPIs?

The essential KPIs are the 'average return on ad dollars spent,' the 'total cost,' and the
'probability of booking'. We can do a balancing act between margin benefits and overall
expenses using these three important variables. Given the evolving technology platform, we'd
like to keep the overall expenses incurred and the percentage return we'd like to get as flexible
as possible. We are not prioritizing average costs because substantial costs can be incurred if a
high percentage rate is associated with such an investment.
Similarly, if something has small margins but is reasonably inexpensive, we see no reason
why we shouldn't have our presence on the web, where people search, buy, and afterward
suggest. 'Booking Probability' is a reinforcement variable. We can perform a sensitivity
analysis on the entire investment in advertising and the rate of return on that investment. Still,
we must ensure that the investment has at least a minimal benefit to ensure that little
inefficiency is explored.
It is debatable whether exposing Air France to internet users, and their conscious or
subconscious recognition of Air France as a viable option, is worth the overall investment of
advertising via a specific channel, and whether it has the potential to establish Air France as a
prominent airline provider in the minds of travellers.

4. How should future SEM campaigns be structured? In the past, Media Contacts had
concentrated on Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo; was there now an opportunity to
optimize search advertising with meta-search companies such as Kayak?

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) campaigns in the future should be built with a greater
emphasis on Pay-Per-Click (PPC) or Sponsored Search. This is because in Pay-Per-Click,
relevancy is evaluated by the advertiser's keyword match, the amount bid for those keywords
about competitor bids, and the number of times an advertisement for a keyword has been
clicked on. This can improve the accuracy of the results for users based on their search terms.
Furthermore, an advertiser is only charged for an advertisement when it is clicked, which can
help advertisers save money by reducing unnecessary spending. Pay-Per-Click may decrease
as volume increases, as the search engine provider determines that the advertisement is more
relevant to those terms based on search results and user clicks.