How Conversion Lift revealed a 7.2% incremental increase for an airline’s loyalty program

For marketers in the travel industry, measurement needs to answer a simple question: Did media investment drive incremental outcomes that would not have happened otherwise? 

MiQ set out to answer that question for a leading airline using The Trade Desk’s Conversion Lift solution to conduct a campaign study. The study measured incremental impact across two high-value, retargeting audiences, giving the team a clearer way to connect media spend to: 

• Confirmed flight bookings 

• Confirm loyalty program enrollments 

The results helped MiQ and the brand show measurable lower-funnel impact on our platform. The campaign also demonstrated a repeatable measurement approach that can apply to advertisers across verticals. 

Turning lower-funnel measurement into a growth opportunity 

MiQ has long partnered with us to help advertisers activate across premium channels, including connected TV, digital out-of-home, and audio. This campaign let the team build on that foundation by using our Conversion Lift solution to measure incremental outcomes tied to specific business goals. 

The airline wanted to understand whether media exposure changed user behavior and drove incremental results, specifically bookings and loyalty program enrollments. MiQ needed a measurement approach that could go beyond standard campaign reporting and show whether media exposure was driving additional action. 

Conversion Lift offered a way to isolate that incremental impact. Rather than measuring only whether exposed people converted, the solution compared exposed audiences with a control group — users who were not shown the campaign’s messaging — to estimate the conversions driven by media investment. 

That made the campaign a practical test case for a larger partnership goal: helping the team prove the value of conversion-focused activation on our platform and templatize the use case for other advertisers.

Measuring incremental impact across key audiences 

The study measured performance across two retargeting audiences: a loyalty audience and an active booker audience. The two audiences, measured against the control group, gave the team a way to evaluate incremental impact across both immediate travel intent and longer-term customer loyalty. 

The loyalty retargeting audience focused on driving loyalty program enrollments, helping the brand measure impact beyond a single transaction. The active booker audience included users who had shown strong intent on the airline’s site, through flight search and purchase-related activity, with a goal of increasing bookings. Both audiences showed positive lift. 

Among the loyalty retargeting audience, results showed a healthy 7.2% conversion lift between the exposed users and the control group. The active booker audience also showed a positive conversion lift of 1.1%. Even so, this audience still drove a positive life in incremental bookings. 

These results gave MiQ and the brand a clearer way to understand how media exposure contributed to incremental bookings across high-value audiences. 

Showing the value of always-on testing 

For the team, this campaign demonstrated how Conversion Lift can support an always testing mindset across media channels. This measurement solution provided the team with an earning agenda — a strategy where partners’ key objectives are tested and answered throughout the year. It helps define that testing mindset with a concrete plan. The tests can be set up at the beginning of the year within the agenda or added when a set of results comes in — leading to follow-up questions that need to be answered. 

Marketers need to understand the incremental value of every investment. Standard reporting can show what happened after exposure, but it does not always show what happened because of exposure. By using Conversion Lift to connect media activity to incremental bookings, the team became more confident in its media strategy and better equipped to make performance-based decisions. 

Lower-funnel measurement is most valuable when it is actionable and helps you plan smarter: 

• See where media exposure creates additional demand 

• Understand which audiences respond incrementally 

• Apply campaign learnings to audience strategy, budget allocation, and optimization 

• Identify where future investment may have the greatest impact 

Connecting performance media to incremental outcomes 

For advertisers, the important question is not only whether conversions happened, but whether media investment helped cause them. That distinction is especially important in lower-funnel campaigns, where audiences may already be close to converting. 

Lift measurement provides a clearer way to evaluate performance against business outcomes that matter, such as: 

• Purchases 

• Lead submissions 

• Account sign-ups 

• App downloads 

With that view, you can better understand where media is creating incremental value, which audiences are most responsive, and how to plan future investment with more confidence. 

For lower-funnel campaigns, that can make performance measurement more useful. Instead of optimizing only toward attributed conversions, you can use Conversion Lift to understand where media is contributing to real business growth. 

For MiQ and the airline, the campaign showed how Conversion Lift connected media investment to incremental bookings. For advertisers more broadly, it offers a useful model for measuring what programmatic media actually contributes and applying those insights to future campaign planning.