NEEDHAM, Mass.—TripAdvisor this week announced the launch of new performance reporting for customers with ads running through its Sponsored Placements program, which the company launched in April. The company says that the new analytics provide accommodation businesses with actionable metrics to help them drive incremental awareness and business through their ad campaigns.
Sponsored Placements enables high-visibility ad placements on TripAdvisor. With the new performance reporting capabilities, advertisers will be able to measure the impact of their campaigns at a glance from within their Management Center, with performance analytics and insights into competitive intelligence metrics such as market share. TripAdvisor says that with this new feature, Sponsored Placements customers are seeing, on average, an uplift of 17 percent in unique visits to their TripAdvisor listing.
“We see Sponsored Placements as a real game changer and our clients are seeing the results too–mostly because it’s helping accommodation businesses influence potential guests during a critical phase of the customer purchase path, but also because it’s what the industry has been asking us for, and we’ve delivered,” says Martin Verdon-Roe, vice president of hotel product and marketing at TripAdvisor. “Now we’re giving Sponsored Placements customers the key performance metrics they need to ensure they can measure the success of their campaigns and make strategic decisions about budget and timing. We’re also continuing to invest in our existing solutions for accommodation businesses with a series of recent enhancements to optimize Business Advantage features. All of these improvements help accommodation owners drive direct booking referrals and build customer loyalty.”
Sponsored Placements performance reporting capabilities include: visibility into the number of ad impressions; the number of visits to a property’s TripAdvisor listing, including incremental traffic; booking referrals generated as a result of ads; and the percentage of market share for a property in locations where their ads are showing.
“Sponsored Placements is a powerful tool–it’s saving the season for us,” says David Martinez i Urgell who leads the digital marketing and e-commerce strategy for The Derby Hotels Collection, a family-owned, 14-property chain based primarily in Barcelona. Martinez i Urgell knew 2018 was going to be a difficult year for tourism in the market so he decided to try Sponsored Placements to get an edge over the competition. “With your Sponsored Placements listed above search results, it catches more people’s eyes and they click to learn more. We aim to delight potential guests on TripAdvisor with our reviews, photography, and services. We thought that the more travelers see us on TripAdvisor, the more bookings we could convert. Sponsored Placements has increased our year-over-year bookings by 25 percent and we’re getting 6 percent more in revenue. This is particularly impactful because some of our competitors are down 30 to 40 percent, forcing them to reduce services and amenities. We’ve been able to avoid this reduction.”
Sponsored Placements is available to all accommodation providers with an active Business Advantage subscription, who share live rates and availability through TripAdvisor. Sponsored Placements and Business Advantage are designed to work together; ads drive traffic to a property’s listing, where the tools and features available to Business Advantage subscribers help to influence and convert potential guests.
As part of ongoing efforts to improve TripAdvisor’s suite of solutions for accommodation providers, the company also made updates to Business Advantage: adding subscriber website links to organic search results on TripAdvisor, providing potential guests with another opportunity to click directly through to a property’s site; making subscriber website links more prominent within the contact details on a property’s listing on TripAdvisor; optimizing subscriber contact details on mobile web to increase visibility for potential customers; and adding website details to property overview section on TripAdvisor listing pages.
