Tourism Australia's latest advertising campaign - There's nothing like Australia - is off to an impressive start, with the ad receiving more than eight million views since being launched a fortnight ago.
The ad - featuring iconic scenes around Australia - has chalked up 175,000 views on YouTube with a further 240,000 views on the TA website.
The ad also is popular in Australia's fastest growing market, China, with more than 8.3 million views on digital platforms.
Andrew McEvoy, managing director of Tourism Australia, speaking at the Australian Tourism Exchange in Perth said the strategy of using digital advocacy to sell Australia had been critical to the campaign's rapid and widespread take-up.
The A$250 million ad campaign is being rolled out in China, THe United Kingdom, the USA and Australia and will be active in 18 of Australia's key markets by the end of 2012.
Responding to questions from the media audience regarding the wisdom of using Facebook, which was said to be losing market share and not as popular as it once was, and why the ads had not yet translated into new business for Australian tourism operators, McEvoy said Facebook was still a powerful tool with massive impact.
"We will stick to our knitting," said McEvoy. "We are building content and information on major sites including airlines and travel sites such as Expedia and Orbitz. We can't help all 288,000 tourism products in Australia, so we will just do our job to the best of our ability and work towards our 2020 goal of doubling market share."
