In this exclusive interaction with The Catalyst, Malika Kennedy, Chief Business Development Officer at Yango Ads MEA, shares insights into her professional journey, the role of Yango Ads in reshaping travel and tourism marketing, and how AI and digital innovation are unlocking new opportunities for brands across the region.
Please share your professional journey in brief and your experience with Yango Ads?
I have been living in the UAE for 18 years. I started my career in digital marketing when search advertising was just emerging, and social media wasn’t even a thing. I was among the first to launch Twitter ads 12 years ago, before Facebook and Instagram gained traction. Seeing digital media grow from 5–10% of media budgets to around 80% today has been incredible.
Yango Group is at the forefront of technology, delivering a broad spectrum of services that empower businesses to innovate and grow. It supports B2B clients with white-label solutions for retail and e-commerce, covering full-cycle platform support. Our advertising network continues to grow across apps and local partners like Landmark, and Tabby.
Yango Play simplifies entertainment with one app for videos and content, offering exciting advertising opportunities. Our Maps platform provides unique geofencing advertising, and Yango Drive is the largest car rental marketplace, making rentals convenient without deposits.
My professional journey at Yango Tech has been a fulfilling one, where I get to explore the potential of technology, implement innovative business strategies, understand consumer behaviour, and drive growth. At Yango, after just two years, we have launched several successful products.
This experience continues to inspire me to innovate and push the boundaries of what technology can achieve.
What’s your perspective on the evolving intersection of technology and travel, which has become such a powerful combination?
Audiences have become a lot savvier, and with the evolution of digital advertising, not just in travel, the fight for human attention has never been fiercer. As new advertising technologies and platforms emerge, this competition will only intensify.
In the travel business, you are not just competing with other hotels or travel services; you are competing with everything else vying for a user’s attention. Flexible banking options and microloans, like those offered by Tabby or Tamarah, have transformed the online travel ecosystem. They allow users to break down big-ticket items like vacations into multiple payments with just a couple of clicks, which is incredibly convenient.
Today, mobile experiences dominate. Whether users are researching destinations on search engines, getting inspired by social media reels, or reading reviews, the context matters. With Yango Ads, we leverage first-party behavioural data from our e-commerce-driven consumer interactions to understand user income brackets and movements. Our lifestyle apps connect with high-end travellers at the right moment, helping us target the audience effectively.
As new advertising technologies and platforms emerge, this competition will only intensify. It will be fascinating to see how brands leverage innovation to engage travellers in meaningful and memorable ways.
The travel market is highly competitive, with both spontaneous travellers and those who plan ahead. How do you cater to such diverse audiences?
Today, defining audiences simply by age or gender isn’t enough. Everyone travels, so we must approach this contextually. Advertisers need to align their content with key travel funnel stages, such as inspiration, research, planning, and booking.
We have found that video ads perform well during the inspiration phase, while in-app and contextual offers excel in the booking and destination phases. Understanding audience behaviour, what they search for, which websites they visit, is critical for segmentation. For example, 62% of travellers discover booking platforms via search engines, so covering that foundational channel is essential. When SEO and paid search ads are combined effectively, one plus one equals more than two, delivering strong uplift in performance.
We also leverage signals for both early planners and last-minute bookers. Early bird offers can be targeted to those planning months ahead, while last-minute packages, sometimes including extras like food or spa, are shown to spontaneous travellers. The most successful ads enable seamless, one-click transitions from ad to booking, with transparent pricing and flexible terms, ensuring the right message reaches the right audience at the right time.
Reading consumer behaviour, what are the best AI applications that are really making significant impact?
AI has made many routine tasks, which were previously time-intensive, much easier. The way we process data and gain insights using AI is incredibly important, with multiple applications in advertising and travel.
For example, AI enables hyper-personalization by analyzing billions of data points, such as mobility, app usage, location histories, and spending behaviour. It also supports predictive targeting, identifying users most likely to travel when and where based on real-time contextual signals. AI can generate content and creative assets, creating dynamic, personalized ads that deliver the right offer, image, and text to the right audience. Remarketing campaigns powered by AI have been shown to boost engagement by up to 40%.
Personally, my first exposure to AI’s power in advertising was through a case study by Delta Airlines via Digitas US, where over 200,000 videos were created at scale for loyalty program members back in 2013–2014. It was clear then that AI was changing advertising forever.
AI also helps create dynamic audience segments, identifying signals that human eyes might miss, ensuring highly specific targeting. In the MENA region, AI-driven campaigns improve conversion rates by up to 25%, and when fully leveraged, results can be 2–3x higher. Users now expect seamless, relevant, and timely experiences, they don’t want irrelevant ads.
How is Yango leveraging creative communication, design, and digital marketing to enhance customer engagement and drive growth in the travel tech and tourism sector?
At Yango, we believe that travel is not just a transaction, it’s an experience. Our approach combines creative communication, intuitive design, and data-driven digital marketing to connect with travellers in meaningful ways. From personalized campaigns that anticipate customer preferences to immersive app experiences and visually engaging content, we aim to make every interaction seamless and memorable. By integrating storytelling with advanced analytics, we can not only attract travellers but also foster loyalty, ensuring that our marketing efforts translate into measurable business growth.
Furthermore, we continuously experiment with emerging digital channels and technologies, from social media activations to AI-driven recommendation engines, to ensure our marketing remains innovative, relevant, and impactful. Ultimately, it’s about creating a journey that begins before the trip and continues long after, leaving a lasting impression that strengthens the Yango brand.
How are brands and businesses leveraging AI and technology to unlock new opportunities, moving from guesswork to precision and personalized experiences?
The most important use of AI is in data processing, identifying trends, personalizing experiences, and helping businesses unlock new opportunities. It also saves a lot of time, which translates directly into cost savings.
For example, creating website or social media content traditionally required hiring many experts, but AI allows businesses to achieve more with fewer people. It doesn’t replace human creativity; rather, it acts as a powerful enabler, a copilot that makes people’s time much more efficient and effective.
With AI, businesses can process more work in less time, achieve higher returns from advertising campaigns, and open up new avenues for growth. The combination of precision, personalization, and efficiency is what makes AI so transformative for brands today.
Can you highlight any campaign that stands out for Yango Ads?
Well, there’s one campaign in an emerging market that really blew my mind. It was a true omni-channel experience. Yango Taxis is a leader in many markets, and in this campaign, we used taxi wrapping as a moving outdoor banner. We used premium cars and, thanks to geofencing, AI helped us identify users who were most likely to see these wrapped cars.
We then retargeted these users on our digital advertising network, pushing them further down the funnel. What made me proud was how cost-efficient it was for offline advertising while being so connected to digital. Unlike traditional campaigns where the journey is often broken, here we maintained engagement digitally, guiding users toward making decisions seamlessly. This, I think, is one of the most beautiful applications of AI we’ve done with Yango Ads.
The conversation highlights how technology, data, and AI are reshaping the travel and advertising ecosystem, creating opportunities for brands to connect with consumers in more personalized, seamless, and impactful ways. By blending creativity with advanced analytics and focusing on user experience, the future of travel marketing is moving beyond transactions to deliver meaningful journeys that inspire loyalty, drive growth, and set new benchmarks for the industry.
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