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Campaign Imminent: Airbnb prepares for December IPO despite pandemic (Score 43)

In preparation for December's IPO, Airbnb reported in July that customers had booked over 1m nights in a single day for the first time since March. This is largely attributed to its willingness to diversify and grow. Airbnb hopes to raise around $3b in its IPO, and it's largely focused on Airbnb Experiences, a range of unique activities designed and hosted by locals that offer one-of-a-kind interpersonal connections.

iSpot reports the company invested in one major national TV push so far this year, spending around $1.5m in late July. These commercials largely targeted Gen-X with a male skew, with top targeted shows including America's Got Talent, the 2019 Open Championship Highlights, The Wall, World of Dance and The Titan Games. Airbnb's full 2019 spend increased significantly to $1.3m from $53.6k in 2018.

According to Adbeat, the company allocated around $627.1k toward digital display from October 2019-2020, a notable drop from the roughly $4.5m allocated from October 2018-2019. Hopefully, spend will pick back up after the IPO, which will leave Airbnb with more available ad dollars. Most of the past year's spend went toward programmatic ads placed via either Google Display Network ($192.8k) or Google DV360 ($122.4k). Google Display Network placed ads onto sites such as eater.com ($81.9k), ellentube.com, vox.com, dailymail.co.uk and yahoo.com; Google DV360's top targeted sites included countryliving.com ($8.9k), delish.com, pch.com, nbcsports.com and politico.com.

Additionally, Magellan reports Airbnb aired 425 podcast ads within the past year.

The company has a very wide target demographic with a slight male skew. As I briefly mentioned, its ad spend should gain more traction after its IPO since it'll have a larger marketing budget. Kantar data reports Airbnb also invests in OOH but, at least as of H1 2020, hasn't utilized print, radio or local broadcast since 2019.

Agency & martech readers - With more funding, Airbnb could seek to hire new agency partners; keep it on your radar, especially considering we have not yet heard of a conclusion to Bokeh (product marketing).