Island Expeditions 29 August 2026

The season ahead

The campaigns we have across Meta and Google, the settings on them, how each one performed last season, and the month by month budgets from September for approval.

5 Meta campaigns 6 Google campaigns Every ad links through to the real thing

The booking window for winter and spring travel opens in the autumn and closes off at the end of March, so that is where the money goes. 77% of the year's budget sits in those seven months, peaking across November to February. April onward the campaigns stay on at a low level to keep the audiences and the learning alive, then step back up in September. Everything in this document is built around that shape.

The season just finished, 1 October 2025 to 31 March 2026, on both platforms. These are the same figures as the June document, refreshed from the accounts. Together the two platforms delivered 1,200,212 impressions and 74,125 clicks for $25,621.13 of media.

Google carries the higher cost per click, which is expected when you are buying people at the moment they search, and Meta carries the volume at a fraction of the price. The two do different jobs, which is the argument for keeping both funded through the season rather than choosing between them.

Four campaigns that run all year. Two find new people, two come back to people who already know the brand. All four optimise for the same thing, a completed enquiry on the landing page, tracked by the pixel firing on the thank you page. Each ad set carries its own audience, so nothing overlaps by accident.

The creative is built as a library rather than as fixed ads. Each ad pairs one video or image with one of three text sets, and Meta serves whichever combination is working for the person it is in front of, in the right shape for wherever it appears. Click any tile to watch or view the real ad.

This one is built for the cold months and is paused through the summer by design, which is why it is not spending today. It is the campaign that goes back on as the season opens: a straight weather play aimed at people in the coldest core cities, on its own landing page at /escapewinter/ rather than the general one.

Three layers. The two Targeted campaigns chase the trip searches themselves, broken into ad groups so the ad text can match the search. High intent keywords concentrates on the searches closest to a booking. The two Branded campaigns hold the top of the page when somebody searches for Island Expeditions by name. Landing Page Traffic is a Performance Max campaign that lets Google place one set of assets everywhere it has inventory.

Google search ads are responsive: several headlines and descriptions are supplied, and Google assembles the combination most likely to win each individual auction. Every live line is below.

One asset group, Unbounce PPC page, feeding Search, YouTube, Gmail, Discover and Display from a single set of images and text.

Each campaign points at its own page, which is what makes a conversion rate per campaign possible rather than one number for the whole account.

Month by month, carrying forward the same shape as last year: build through the autumn, peak across November to February while the booking window is open, then step back down once the season closes at the end of March. $45,500 across the twelve months, $35,000 of it inside the season. These are the figures we would like signed off so the step up in September can be scheduled.

Prepared by Echo Digital for Island Expeditions · 29 August 2026. Campaign settings, ad copy and creative pulled live from the Meta and Google Ads accounts on the day. Performance covers 2025-10-01 to 2026-03-31.