LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM--(Marketwired - Nov 4, 2016) -  Thomson, the UK's largest tour operator, and Flashtalking, the leading global independent ad server have partnered to create their first 360 video creative campaign in ad units, showcasing St. Lucia's jungle zip-line.

The launch, which integrates immersive 360 video into mobile and display advertising formats, highlights Thomson's emerging leadership in Virtual Reality 360 content.

Thomson recently announced summer and winter holidays to St. Lucia adding to their extensive offering to the exotic Caribbean islands. Widely considered one of the most beautiful of the Caribbean islands, with its soaring volcanic peaks, dense rainforests and stunning beaches, St. Lucia is an ideal choice to launch immersive 360 video content to its customers. 

"Flashtalking is excited to be working with Thomson on a new innovative format to bring the brand to life. The 360 ad format we have developed, delivers a truly mobile-first experience," said Martin Pavey, Flashtalking UK Country Director. "This execution is a powerful example of how a travel and tourism brand can put video technology to work to drive deeper engagement."

More on the Thomson 360 Campaign for St. Lucia

• One of the few truly mobile-first video formats, the experience is best enjoyed on mobile devices, where the video responds in real time to phone movements
• The campaign featured highly engaging online ad formats enabling users to truly engage with the brand and experience St. Lucia in a non-linear, 360 space.

Christian Armond, General Manager, Digital Marketing at Thomson, said, "We have seen a shift in the way customers research and book their holidays and our partnership with Flashtalking on 360 videos is another example of our commitment to strengthen our content to serve incredible engaging destination content to our customers. Flashtalking has devised a way for us to test the impact of 360 content compared to standard video in a truly mobile-first format."

Mobile is an ideal showcase for this opportunity. Using the device's inbuilt accelerometer, Flashtalking is able to deliver a 360 video format that immerses the user in the advertised destination. The St. Lucia footage of a zip-line allows the user to look around the jungle as they accelerate through the canopy. The 360 video footage sits within the expand of the ad, loading on user interaction and only playing once fully loaded -- offering the best user experience.

To ensure a consistent user experience across devices, the desktop creative prompts the user to use a mouse 'click and drag' action to explore the 360 video footage, all within the ad unit.

Flashtalking will be running A/B tests to quantify and report on the relative performance of 360 video compared to standard video throughout the campaign.

About Thomson
Thomson, part of TUI UK & Ireland, is one of the UK's most well-known holiday brands, delivering unique and modern holiday experiences for its customers every year. 

Its flagship hotels fall under Sensatori -- luxury holiday experience featuring world class spas and gourmet dining; Sensimar -- offering stylish hotels in beach front locations exclusively for adults; and Family Life, which have been designed for families with younger children, featuring excellent kids' clubs giving parents a care-free, relaxing holiday.

Thomson is the sister company of First Choice, both using Thomson Airways to take over 5.5 million people on holiday each year.

TUI UK and Ireland is a member of TUI Group.

About Flashtalking
Flashtalking arms the world's best advertisers and their agencies with the same data-driven precision, measurability, and control over their advertising messages as they've come to depend on for their audience targeting and programmatic media buying. Our programmatic creative technology delivers the art and science behind the perfect message. We have evolved the ad server to be the single point of truth for advertisers, living at the digital crossroads where data activation, intelligent ad units, and unbiased measurement intersects with expertise, service, and a deep partner ecosystem. From our media agnostic platform advertisers can deliver the most arresting advertising messages in HTML5 across standard, rich, video, and DCO formats, on any device and in any channel. Born in the U.K., headquartered in New York, Flashtalking spans the globe with offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, London, Leeds, Cologne, Amsterdam, and Sydney. For more information, visit www.flashtalking.com.