Ryanair quote on click-through traffic

[Flightmapping]

Found this on another website (http://irish.typepad.com/irisheyes/2...httalking.html)


On the ultimate goal: "Free tickets. In a decade or so, airlines will pay travellers to distribute people around Europe. The airline industry is Tesco, is Ikea, is network TV in the way viewers watch for free and advertisers pay for access to them, is the internet in the same way that websites earn money for delivering click-through traffic to other sites."

Nothing new in the free tickets stuff, but interesting how he acknowledges that "websites earn money for delivering click-through traffic to other sites", yet afaik, Ryanair themselves have never paid a penny for internet advertising. I know they briefly appeared on Kelkoo for a few weeks last year, but I presume that was some kind of free trial?

I will get to attend a meeting with Ryanair next week, now even if affiliation isn't top of the agenda, I may put something to them.

They always talk about wanting to save money, yet the cost of their media spend is around 4% of these airlines' turnover. We all know affiliate marketing is the most cost effective way to drive traffic and revenue, but how do we get this across to other companies?

Or are Ryanair themselves too much of an affiliate (think car hire, hotels, loans etc) to want to play this game with anyone else?

[AndyCoke]

James,

I for one would be very interested in what Ryanair have to say about a possible affiliate scheme.

Please PM me me with your findings unless you put them up on the forum.

Kind regards

Andy

[Flightmapping]

As said, the affiliate issue was not the main reason for being there, but the answer was a firm no.

Apparently all down to not wanting to dilute the branding of Ryanair.com - their argument is that if someone is on the web, they are going to go there anyway, whereas media adverts pull people in to the site with the lastest special offers.

I don't see this budging any time soon, but will try and get more answers if I can.