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Executive Report, Adthena
The Paid Search Landscape: Travel
adthena
Creative Commons 2018 Adthena. Some Rights Reserved
Contents Page
1.Executive Summary
1.1 AI technology: An Opportunity
1.2 Partner management and brand protection
1.3 Takeaways for travel brands
2.Google Hotel and Flight Ads
2.1 What is driving growth for Google Hotel and Flight ads
2.2 The impact on organic search
2.3 How influential are Google Hotel and Flight Ads
2.4 Greater advertiser diversity
2.5 Fight or flight
2.6 Key Takeaways
3.Category segmentation within travel
3.1 Challenges of scale
3.2 Subcategory benchmarks
3.3 Key Takeaway
4.Mapping the Competitive Landscape
4.1 Diversity, competition, and complexity in travel search
4.2 Competitive complexity
4.3 How does competition impact brands
4.4 Key Challenges
4.5 Key Takeaways
5.Seeing the Bigger Picture
5.1 How can competitive intelligence beneft brands in travel
5.2 Seeing the complete picture with the Whole Market View
Creative Commons 2018 Adthena. Some Rights Reserved
Executive Report, Adthena
The Paid Search Landscape: Travel
adthena
Search advertising in travel is changing. New ad formats, such as
Google Hotel and Flight ads, are redefining ad space in the
sector disrupting markets and ad spend. This report covers how
brands operating in travel search are contending with new
challenges and competitive market conditions, while also
defending existing digital brand equity.
1.Executive SummaryExecutive Report, Adthena
The Paid Search Landscape: Travel
adthena
Creative Commons 2018 Adthena. Some Rights Reserved
Since their introduction in 2015, Google Hotel and Flight sponsored ad units, which surface
competitive price aggregation directly in Google searches, have greatly increased the diversity of
advertisers that compete for visibility on a first page search result.
Offering “twice the conversion rate [on mobile]” according to the Google Hotel ads portal1, advertisers
have been eager to seek validation of the platform’s offerings. In the Luxury Travel category, our
research found that 29.84% of advertiser’s campaign keywords are now linked to Google Hotel ads.
In the most popular categories, up to 30% of results pages now
result in a Hotel or Flight ads comparison box. It paints a strong
picture of the scale and infuence that Hotel and Flight ads are
having on the travel landscape.
Ashley Fletcher, VP of Marketing, Adthena
And there is a recent precedent for such changes. The introduction of Google Shopping campaigns, or
Product Listing Ads, also introduced a greater depth of available ad units and rich-media ad extensions,
into sector-specifc search engine results pages. The infuence of PLAs has had a huge impact on online
retail, and a recent Adthena study,
The Rise of Google Shopping
, identifed that Google Shopping
Campaigns now drive 76.4% of US retail search ad spend.
As brands direct spend into newer ad formats, Hotel and Flight ads have created a scenario in which
Google is, to an extent, disrupting the long-established Adwords (recently re-branded as Google Ads)
model to promote Hotel and Flight ads as major drivers of travel industry ad spend.
1.1 AI technology: An Opportunity
A parallel challenge for travel brands, and a much more enduring one, is to leverage the large amounts of
data now available -- especially in a period when adoption of new formats may be generating market share
movement.
New client-centric AI solutions look to solve these problems with technology that helps advertisers get
straight to actionable insights from data, and brands have the opportunity to beneft from this in order to
build a comprehensive understanding of the multi-touchpoint user journeys that defne consumer travel
purchases.
1. Google Hotel Ads, 2018。。。。。。。。。