DUBAI June 17th, 2013 - With advertising revenues looking set to exceed $5 billion across the GCC in 2013 and digital media growing in its influence, Wego.com, the leading travel search engine in the Middle East and Asia Pacific, has announced a new Audience Engagement Platform.

An industry first, Wego's extended programmatic advertising technology stack will deliver more targeted inventory online to Gulf-based clients. Connecting with the real-time bidding ad ecosystem, Wego is enabling advertisers to select users shopping for travel by country of origin and destination, following their content journeys on-site and re-targeting them off-site.

Heading the initiative is Rick Mulia, Vice President Media and Advertising Solutions who recently joined Wego from related media roles at Microsoft and MSN: "Clients want more targeted buys, with better ROIs and less waste. Wego's new Audience Engagement Platform, designed to follow people, not places, plays to Wego's strengths and provides a quality audience with high travel intent. We know it will perform."

Hotel chains, for example, focussed on travellers searching specific destinations can extend their campaigns to sequence marketing messages to those individuals outside of the Wego network. Re-marketing to previous Wego users shopping for travel is another new powerful capability.

Mulia has also packaged Creative Services with the new platform to offer full campaign management consulting. "We have vast experience when it comes to the travel purchasing funnel and can make a significant difference by sharing our knowledge with other online advertisers."

The Audience Engagement Platform serves hotels and airlines, but is expected to attract other travel-related service providers like credit card companies, insurers and telcos. "Starting with re-targeting, re-marketing and audience extension campaigns we will go deeper with our segmenting capabilities, selecting users for their business class or family travel plans, even their preference for a hotel chain, frequent flyer or hotel star rating for example," Mulia added.

The audience includes users of all 52 customised Wego sites in 30 languages around the world, a community that currently generates bookings of over $1.2 billion per quarter, the aggregated value of transactions the company passes to its travel partners.

Wego is rolling out the new technology during the clickmarketingsummit in Dubai this week as the first clients go live over the Wego network.  For more information, email adsales@wego.com

Source: The Kuwait Financial Centre (Markaz) recently reported that advertising revenues in the GCC grew by 5% year-on-year to $4.8bn in 2012, with the UAE and Saudi Arabia having the largest share.

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For more information, contact:
Mohamad Ibrahim Masri Managing Director - Wego Middle East
Tel: +971 4 298 1775
Mobile: +971 506760033
Email: masri@wego.com

About Wego
Wego.com is the Asia Pacific and Middle East's leading travel metasearch engine, operating in over 50 markets worldwide and used by millions of travellers to save time, pay less and travel more. The company provides powerful yet simple to use tools that help travellers research trips, compare prices and book travel online, either direct with a hotel or airline or via an online travel agent or aggregator site. Wego was founded in 2005 and shareholders include Tiger Global Management and the Crescent Point Group. For more information, please visit www.wego.com/about

© Press Release 2013