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Meliá Hotels International

16 February 2020

Reaching audiences less exposed to TV with Facebook video ads


Meliá decided to adapt their TV campaigns to work as Facebook video ads, resulting in a significant increase in reach among a high-value audience that is less likely to watch TV.

Led by leisure


 Meliá Hotels is one of Spain's largest domestic operators of holiday resorts founded in 1956. Currently operating in more than 380 hotels in 40 countries on 4 continents under the brands Meliá, Gran Meliá and Sol Hotels, it is the 17th biggest hotel chain worldwide. Meliá wanted to expand their demographic, and create a campaign offering attractive discounts at all their destinations. It hoped to reach a high-value audience that is less likely to watch TV.

High-value targeting


Meliá wanted to target audiences that were more likely to make a booking in its hotels and make them aware of its Wonder Week offering. Using Facebook Custom Audiences targeting allowed Meliá to reach out to some of its clients who had previously made purchases during Black Friday campaigns. It then used that audience as the basis to create a lookalike audience. Facebook identified common qualities of people in the Custom Audience, such as demographic information and interests, so that it could deliver Meliá’s ads to people likely to make bookings.
Drawing on assets from its concurrent TV campaign, adapting creatively to suit placements across square and vertical formats. The campaign used Facebook and Instagram Stories, video ads on Facebook and Instagram feed, and Facebook collection ads. These formats had performed well in the past and gave Meliá the space it needed to display high-budget creative, while also showing some of the hotels advertised. The campaign also used automatic placements on Facebook and Instagram to generate optimum results at the lowest average cost.

A week of wonder


Meliá Hotels drove significant interest in its Wonder Week deals by carefully targeting its Facebook ads campaign. Running from June 4–11, 2019, the campaign achieved:

  • 65% of people reached on Facebook had not been exposed to the TV campaign

  • 10-point lift in ad recall

  • 11.8% lift in sales (representing 311 incremental conversions)

  • 7.8X return on ad spend for incremental sales

  • 10-point lift in message association of Wonder Week to Meliá


This blog was originally taken from Facebook.