February 29, 2024
As digital media experts in the travel space, we know that getting your target audience’s attention is more complex than ever, with the variety of resources they turn to and the multiple ways that travelers engage with advertising across different channels along their purchasing journey. That’s why we’re consistently bringing hotel advertisers first-party data insights, advice, and new features like TravelAds Sponsored Listings automated bidding. Savvy advertisers and marketers know that with TravelAds you have complete control over your pay-per-click daily spend, making it an effective hotel advertising solution for any budget.
Another benefit is that TravelAds helps your property stay competitive by boosting your position in search engine results pages, and there are steps you can take to help increase your visibility further. For example, using our bidding tools is an important step toward being competitive and optimizing your campaigns with TravelAds because they help you drive the desired results for your hotel.
Properties running a TravelAds campaign are 90% more visible in search results*
That said, we know that bidding, which is the maximum amount of money advertisers and marketers are willing to pay for each click on their ad, can be complex and time-consuming. Plus, you may be unsure about what bidding tool will best align with your marketing campaign goals. That’s why we’re excited to bring you automated bidding, a robust new TravelAds feature that will help you reclaim your time, remove the guesswork from the bidding process, and maximize your performance.
Getting started with pay-per-click solutions for better hotel visibility
Before we dive into all the benefits and capabilities of TravelAds automated bidding, we want to point out that you’ll need a TravelAds account to take advantage of this feature. If you haven’t used TravelAds in a while, now is a great time to see how easy it is to create a competitive sponsored listing. Next, we’ll take a closer look into what you can do with automated bidding and how you can use TravelAds’ precise targeting options and our exclusive first-party data to help you run successful goal-based campaigns and boost your revenue.
Ad campaigns that maximize your performance within your budget
Running TravelAds is already a cost-effective way to help drive demand, and automated bidding makes it easier than ever to manage your spend so you can advertise your hotel regardless of your budget. You simply set your daily budget and automated bidding dynamically adjusts your bids throughout the day to help you meet your goals. Plus, you can switch between automatic and manual bidding whenever you want for added flexibility and control.
If you’re wondering if automated bidding is a good fit for your hotel, know that automated bidding is for boutique hotels, large hotel chains, or any property using TravelAds that wants to free up time and maximize their visibility with potential customers.
Here’s an example: If you’re a hotel reviewing your room nights for March and you see that you’re only at 65% capacity while your revenue management strategy calls for 99% capacity, you can use automated bidding to bid on placements to help fill that gap. The simplicity of TravelAds automated bidding is that you don’t have to go into your bids every day to see how much was spent or how much was booked and then determine how to effectively reallocate your budget to meet your goals.
Automated bidding for optimizing your campaigns with TravelAds
You set your goals. We help you achieve them. Our robust automated bidding feature enables you to effortlessly make data-driven adjustments, become more efficient, and make informed decisions with first-party data insights in TravelAds.
- Data-driven adjustments help you meet changes in supply and demand. Hotel room availability fluctuates, but with automated bidding you have access to our real-time data to stay aware of these changes.
- Drive efficiency through automation. With automated bidding, your bids are dynamically adjusted throughout the day to help you manage your spend and save time.
- Make informed decisions with data in your TravelAds portal to consistently optimize your hotel advertising campaigns. These insights help pinpoint optimization opportunities, and our digital experts provide additional guidance with our exclusive first-party data to help you understand the latest traveler trends and behavior.
It’s important for us to be in touch with the Expedia team to be sure we are aligned with our strategy and to adapt if needed. For instance, July should be a very good month for us, but sometimes we can see in June that the data doesn’t show that, and we get a bit worried. Then we can decide to adapt our TravelAds strategy.
Joëlle Salles Ducraux, Digital Marketing Manager at The Fairmont Monte Carlo
Turning on automated bidding can help you reach your ideal travelers more effectively, especially when you combine it with our targeting capabilities.
Precise targeting for effective bidding
Our digital experts use our first-party data to help you find your ideal audience and to create powerful audience segments for you, which is especially important with the sunsetting of third-party cookies. Anyone looking for ways to increase your hotel’s revenue can benefit from targeting, from advertisers and marketers to revenue managers.
Here’s an example. Say you want to attract travelers booking longer stays, like remote workers who combine work and play. We can help you:
- Build profiles based on travelers who are looking for extended stays at in-demand destinations.
- Refine this by region and target people that are booking extended stays at beach destinations or look for people searching for extended stays in a select number of U.S. cities, or another factor that fits the profile of travelers you’re looking to connect with.
- Target mobile travelers to help shape their destination decisions and capture people booking on a mobile device.
Bidding helps increase the likelihood of your target traveler seeing your listing. Within automated bidding, we have three market goals to choose from that best suit your needs.
49%
of travelers use social media when looking for a place to stay
34%
book a hotel on a mobile app **
Bidding helps increase the likelihood of your target traveler seeing your listing. Within automated bidding, we have three market goals to choose from that best suit your needs.
TravelAds Sponsored Listings and market leader strategies
With automated bidding, we’ll do the heavy lifting to help your bids line up with your market goal. You’ll decide between market tracker, market follower, and market leader. What does this mean for you? It all comes down to balancing your budget with how competitive you want to be in the auction.
- Market tracker: If you want to know what’s going on in the market and bid to reach your target traveler but you have a lower budget, this might be the goal for you.
- Market player: If you want to be competitive without keeping your bids too low or high, this approach may work for you.
- Market leader: If your goal is to be as competitive as possible and have a high level of participation when bidding in auctions, then you need a strategy to support that. In that case, your market goal may align with that of a market leader.
Once you make your market goal selection, automatic bidding will dynamically adjust your bids based on your goals while staying within the daily spend limit you’ve set.
How to activate automated bidding
Once you’ve created a TravelAds account and started your campaign, utilized our first-party data and insights in your TravelAds strategy, and identified your ideal traveler with precise targeting, there are a few steps to take to activate automated bidding. If you’re ready to get started with TravelAds automated bidding, we’ve compiled an easy-to-use checklist for you.
* Versus properties not running TravelAds, Expedia Group internal data, July 2021-July 2022.
**The Path to Purchase, Luth Research and Expedia Group, 2023.
