Cathay Pacific's 360° VR units drove their highest-performing ad campaign of all time.

Last year, Cathay Pacific Airways USA, the premium airline offering over 100 flights per week from the US to Hong Kong and beyond, launched interactive 360° ad units, taking a bet on the emerging VR space. This year, they're seeing the results, with 360° VR underpinning Cathay Pacific's best performing brand campaign to date.

Robecta Ma, Vice President of Marketing, Americas, for Cathay Pacific, reflects, "The 360° expandable units outperformed our previous brand banners as well as industry average for CTR (0.33%). On publisher sites such as Conde Nast Traveler, customers spent an average of 20.8 seconds on the units (300x600 unit drove 27 seconds)."

In addition to increased performance around user interaction, Cathay Pacific saw strong brand lift in key metrics, most notably in unaided awareness (+27%), favorability (+25%), and preference for the airline (+12%). Ma states, "Campaign exposure significant increased respondents' preference with Cathay Pacific as an airline--particularly among women and affluent readers.?"

The interactive 360° ad units made an impression beyond awareness and brand lift, too: they even drove strong lower funnel performance.

The campaign focused on highlighting Hong Kong and Asia as personal leisure destinations and establishing Cathay Pacific's role as the leader in travel to Asia. The airline especially wanted to target travelers who haven't yet experienced Cathay Pacific. So they turned to interactive 360° ads.

"By enabling digestible 360° video units of our lounge and flight experiences, potential customers can virtually experience a Cathay Pacific flight first hand, which is especially useful for those who do not live close to one of our six American gateways. We wanted to make it accessible to everyone, which means being able to run on mobile phones," states Ma.

Cathay Pacific partnered with OmniVirt, a 360 VR/AR ad platform that enables distribution of VR/AR experiences on any media property, to power and distribute the campaign. This allowed for a much wider reach and targeting which fit the campaign goal of reaching potential customers more successfully.

Looking ahead, Cathay Pacific plans to continue running immersive ads and will test out AR, solidifying 360° VR/AR as an effective tool in a marketer's arsenal.

Industry Announcements's article first appeared on OnlineVideo.net