Online advertising to beat the credit crunch?

Travel marketers remain bullish about the performance of online advertising in the face of the current global economic woes. At Google's TravelThink event in New York recently, JupiterResearch reported the results of a travel marketing survey which showed that 94% of travel executives thought online advertising would provide the strongest return on investment compared to other media in the next 12 months. In addition, the study commissioned by Google suggests that some 20% of travel advertisers will spend more than $10 million on online marketing alone.

When questioned about individual marketing tactics, search engine optimisation came out top along with e-mail. "Search is like your Yellow Pages, billboard--everything all wrapped up in one," said Emily Riley, a senior analyst at Jupiter.