Cheapflights.com advertiser portal helps track campaign data

Cheapflights.com, an independent travel price search and comparison service, debuted a new partner portal to help advertisers with their campaign performance data.

The Web portal from the Boston firm will let advertising partners have daily access to performance data for campaigns across the Web site at www.cheapflights.com. Advertisers will be able to track and view the click-through rates of air flight deal offers published on Cheapflights.com' site.

"We want to be in a position where we want our advertising partners to understand how Cheapflights.com is generating ticket sales on their behalf," said Michael Bennett, general manager of Cheapflights USA.

Cheapflights.com lists about 1 million low-cost airfare deals from travel brands including Travelocity.com, Lufthansa, WestJet, bookairlinetickets.com, Priceline.com, MyLowfare.com and Spirit Airlines.

An estimated 2.5 million users visit Cheapflights.com each month.

The site is a subsidiary of Britain's Cheapflights Ltd., which also operates www.cheapflights.co.uk for the British travel market. The company was launched in 1996 and entered the United States three and a half years ago.

The new Cheapflights.com partner portal is a step up from Cheapflights.com's older version. Advertisers previously had to manually track the performance, calling Cheapflights.com to request for campaign data. A Cheapflights.com employee would then send the data.

"[The] online travel [sector] is getting more and more crowded," Mr. Bennett said. "Because there's more choice out there for consumers, there's more traffic going to our advertising partners. So the Cheapflights advertiser portal allows our partner to track the clicks and attribute them to the channel that's providing the greatest revenue."