Eager to build brand awareness and perhaps planning to take the company public, Kayak is spending almost half of its annual revenues on a huge ad campaign.
 

The campaign will run for the rest of this year and all of 2010. It will include primetime TV shows and sports programming, as well as billboards and video displays in taxis and airports. Target cities will be New York, San Francisco and Las Vegas.
 

Kayak.com also plans to spend $1 million a month on digital ads that target 25- to 44-year-olds with more than $75,000 a year in household income.
 

“The outfit, a search engine for online travel planning that helps travelers compare air fares, rental car and hotel rates, plans to spend most of its $60 million ad budget offline,” reports Forbes Magazine. “It is the first big traditional ad play for the Norwalk, Conn., company.”
Forbes also said:
 

“The company does a lot with the data it collects from users. It tracks the preferences and habits of travelers so it can send them targeted travel offers and ads. It will send ads to consumers who have visited its site and clicked on its Web ads.”
 

Women make up 60 percent of Kayak’s one million daily users.
 

A previous campaign in 2006 included a $3.5 million TV campaign themed “Life’s a Trip” that ran in six local markets for just six weeks.
 

By David Wilkening