Manchester Airports Group see traffic take off with syndication

Manchester Airports Group (MAG), the UK’s largest airports group, serves 59 million passengers across three airports (Manchester, Stansted and East Midlands) and contributes £7.1 billion to the UK economy.

MAG-O, the Group’s digital division, was created with one driving mission–to create the world's most customer-centric and stress-free digital travel experience. To help make that vision a reality, they partnered with Microsoft Advertising.
 
12 months ago, the MAG-O team decided to bring all digital advertising in-house. Part of that process meant restructuring their entire account and developing new relationships with their Microsoft Account Manager.  
 
As the restructured account started to perform and the team looked to increase volume, they were encouraged to try syndication traffic. There was an initial period of cautious testing and learning, where performance was monitored on a bi-weekly basis and optimised diligently. This resulted in the removal of partner sites that were not delivering and bid boosting where performance was strong.
 
“It took a lot of work in the beginning and we had to monitor the syndication reports carefully to make sure that the network gave us what we were looking for," said MAG-O PPC Lead, Hannah Perry. "But one of the benefits of the Microsoft Network is you get to pick and choose what’s right for your brand and you can exclude the traffic from sites you don’t want. Now we know what we are doing, we are down to checking just once every two months.”
 
The results speak for themselves. In the five months between January and May 2019, syndication traffic has increased MAG-O’s overall conversions by 7%, while lowering their average cost per acquisition by 6%. On top of that, the CPCs for syndication clicks are 49% cheaper than their core search campaigns.
 
“Since we turned syndication back on, we have seen more conversions at half the price of our normal search CPCs, which is a great win,” Hannah said.
 
Syndication is now a core part of the MAG-O strategy and, as they continue to see value, they are looking for more ways to invest in Microsoft Advertising.