TV Ads Equal Online Sales For Travelocity

If you want to sell more products online, buy some TV time, concludes Jeffrey Glueck, chief marketing officer for Internet travel agency Travelocity. The site is upping its TV ad budget to encourage travelers to search out its name rather than generic terms, such as "discount travel" or "Hawaii vacation."

Glueck says "the dirty little secret to search [engine advertising] is you make money buying your own brand name, but on generic terms, the clicks are more expensive and the return is low." So to get those customers to search his company out by brand name, he does more TV advertising, although Glueck declines to say by how much.

Last year, the company spent one-third of its $85.2 million budget on TV, according to TNS Media Intelligence, but through the first six months of 2006, that is up to half. At the same time, while Travelocity is still on target to spend the same online in 2006 as it did in 2005, it cut newspaper spending 33% and radio buys 67% in the first six months of this year. -