Bookings grew 245% across two new channels.
Bookings grew 245%. The affiliate programme generated $1.2M in incremental revenue in its first 6 months. Overall CAC fell 28%. The attribution model revealed that programmatic ads drove 38% of affiliate clicks — the channels were reinforcing each other.
Over-reliant on OTAs
Low direct-booking share, high CAC, and no programmatic presence or affiliate partnerships.
Programmatic + affiliate
DV360 display with custom audiences, an affiliate programme built across CJ, Rakuten and Awin, and cross-channel attribution.
+245% bookings
$1.2M incremental affiliate revenue and overall CAC down 28% in six months.
01 The problem
A travel and hospitality group needed to build a scalable multi-channel acquisition engine after over-reliance on OTA channels. Direct booking share was low, CAC was high, and the brand had no programmatic presence or affiliate partnerships.
Two channels that prime each other.
Programmatic and affiliate are usually siloed. Measuring their interaction is what unlocked the growth.
DV360 programmatic
Launched display campaigns with custom audience segments to build demand the OTAs weren't reaching.
Affiliate from scratch
Built a programme across CJ, Rakuten and Awin — recruiting 80 travel content publishers in six weeks.
Cross-channel attribution
Built a model measuring interactions between programmatic and affiliate — programmatic drove 38% of affiliate clicks.
Direct-booking shift
Reduced OTA dependence and lowered overall CAC 28% by diversifying acquisition.
Beyond the OTA dependency.
03 The results
Bookings grew 245%. The affiliate programme generated $1.2M in incremental revenue in its first 6 months. Overall CAC fell 28%. The attribution model revealed that programmatic ads drove 38% of affiliate clicks — the channels were reinforcing each other.
Six months, two new channels.
Programmatic → affiliate → attribution → shift.
DV360 live
Launched programmatic display with custom audience segments.
Affiliate recruited
Built the affiliate programme and recruited 80 publishers across CJ, Rakuten and Awin.
Attribution model
Connected programmatic and affiliate data, revealing 38% of affiliate clicks were programmatic-primed.
Optimisation
Shifted budget toward the reinforcing channels, lowering blended CAC.
+245% bookings
$1.2M incremental affiliate revenue and CAC down 28%.
What the group kept.
Documented, portable, and owned by the client not locked inside our account.
- ✓DV360 programmatic setupCustom audiences and creative.
- ✓Affiliate programmeLive across CJ, Rakuten and Awin.
- ✓Publisher network80 recruited travel content partners.
- ✓Cross-channel attribution modelProgrammatic-to-affiliate interaction.
- ✓Blended-CAC dashboardTrue cost across all channels.
- ✓Channel-mix playbookHow to reduce OTA dependency.
04 Why it worked
The insight that made this work: programmatic and affiliate are usually managed in silos. By building an attribution model that measured their interaction, we discovered programmatic was priming users who then converted through affiliate links. Cross-channel thinking is rare.
Nobody had connected our programmatic and affiliate spend before. Seeing that one primes the other changed how we budget entirely.