Google ROAS
12.48x
Category average. Range across accounts: 6.7x to 22.8x.
Prepared for Ignite Travel Group
Prepared for Ignite Travel Group
What we found inside Ignite's acquisition engine.
You are running two very different buying journeys under one roof: the first-come, first-served impulse deal (ALDI Holidays, My Holiday) and the considered, high-value cruise booking (My Cruises). Most of your category treats those as one audience. They are not.
You told the market you got to the top by experimenting and challenging the norm. This is us doing the same to your media, honestly, from the outside in.
$208Mspent on newspapers
in the category last year
in the category last year
The thing that caught our eye
The category still puts more into print than into digital and social.
Across Travel & Tourism, Newspapers pulled $208M, the single biggest channel line, just ahead of Digital & Social at $193M (Nielsen Ad Intel, as at Dec 2025). For a business built on limited-time, monthly-drop deals like ALDI Holidays, that print weight makes sense for the older cruise and value buyer. But the impulse decision, the one that turns a Special Buy into a booking, happens on a phone. The gap between where the category spends and where your deals actually convert is where a specialist wins.
We've solved thisWe rebuild deal-led travel funnels so the media weight lands at the moment of intent, not before it.
Where you actually sit
Your real fight isn't the airlines. It's three names.
Tour Operator / Agency is the biggest product category in the market at $183M, and it is crowded. Ignite lives in the same lane as TripADeal (the deal-led OTA model closest to your own), Scenic Tours (cruise), and your own parent, Flight Centre. Here is the head-to-head on measured spend.
Whoever owns the deal-of-the-week narrative owns the impulse booking. · Source: Nielsen Ad Intel, as at Dec 2025
If your measured spend against TripADeal surprises you, we can walk through the full competitive picture in half an hour.
Just hit replyThe rhythm of the category
The market peaks in January and empties out by December.
Category spend concentrates hard around the January booking rush and hits its floor in December, right when travellers are already away (Nielsen Ad Intel, as at Dec 2025). For a monthly-drop deal engine, that rhythm is both a risk and an opening: everyone shouts in January, and the December quiet is cheaper attention few are buying.
The trough is not dead air. It is discounted reach for a brand willing to be counter-cyclical. · Source: Nielsen Ad Intel, as at Dec 2025
One honest comparison
What good looks like on paid, from inside real travel accounts.
These are our own first-party benchmarks from Australian and New Zealand travel accounts over the trailing year (Sunny first-party benchmark, as at Jun 2026). Directional, not spend-weighted, but numbers a competitor cannot find on Google. The spread is the story: the gap between the average account and the best one is where your budget is either working or leaking.
Google cost per purchase
$19.41
Best accounts hit $6.79. Weakest sat at $39.91.
Meta cost per purchase
$28.10
A near 10x spread ($8.54 to $83.63). Almost entirely down to structure.
Three things we'd look at first
Where we'd start, specifically.
01
Split the funnel by intent, not by brand
An ALDI Holidays impulse buyer and a My Cruises considerer need different creative, different channels and different measurement windows. Running them on one blended target hides both. We would separate them and hold each to its own cost per purchase.
Track recordWe split deal-led and considered travel funnels and measure them apart.
02
Put your 4M database to work as a lookalike engine
Across three brands plus retail partners, you hold buyer data most competitors cannot match. Feeding that into Google and Meta as seed audiences is the single fastest lever on the cost per purchase numbers above. We would confirm what is currently connected.
Track recordFirst-party audience activation is how our top accounts hit sub-$10 cost per purchase.
03
Own the December trough
While the category retreats after the January peak, deal inventory does not stop. Buying discounted attention when few are competing is how a challenger brand steals share cheaply. We would model what your current December weight looks like.
Track recordWe build counter-cyclical plans that buy reach when it is cheapest.
This is a snapshot, not the plan
A real plan is built on better data than a quick scan.
Everything above came from your website and dated category intel. With your own booking and audience data, the picture sharpens fast.
Nielsen Ad IntelCategory & competitor ad-spend tracking
Roy MorganAudience & consumer profiling
Google Premier PartnerTop tier of Google agencies
Meta Business PartnerVerified platform access
This briefing is what we can see from the outside. Imagine what we'd build with the data on the inside.
Proof, not promises
Check out our success stories.
We've done this for travel & tourism brands right across Australia. See the campaigns, and the results, for yourself.
Check out our success storiesWhat this is actually worth
Here's the size of the prize.
2x+
the room between an average travel account and a top-quartile one
On our first-party benchmarks, Google ROAS runs from 6.7x to 22.8x and Meta cost per purchase from $8.54 to $83.63. Moving even part of your current spend from mid-pack toward the top of that range is a material lift in bookings for the same budget. Against your monthly enquiry volume (a number we’d confirm with you, we would confirm on the call), that compounds quickly.
Directional only. The real figure depends on your current ROAS, spend split across brands and margin per booking, none of which we can see from the outside.
We take on a limited number of teardowns each quarter
The next 30 minutes
Let's pressure-test your acquisition engine, brand by brand.
Bring your current ROAS and cost per purchase. We will show you where they sit against the category and the two or three moves we would make first.
Just hit replyBroadbeach local or over a call, your choice. We are Australian and know the Gold Coast market.
This isn't a sales call in disguise. If the numbers say you are already running tight, we will tell you and shake hands.
- ✓
Your funnel, split by intent
How the deal-led and cruise journeys should be measured and bought differently.
- ✓
The database opportunity
What activating your 4M-plus first-party audience could do to cost per purchase.
- ✓
The competitive read
Where you sit against TripADeal, Scenic Tours and Flight Centre on measured spend.