Food for thought: Online ad costs are rising, Search advertising tips, best ads of the week and the next big thing
Hello ,
As online advertising costs grow it affects direct bookings more than anything else. For a hotel to protect it's brand online through legal means will cost more than simply advertising on it's own name. Some are saying metasearch costs the same as OTAs while others are showing me figures of metasearch being more an more profitable every year. So here's for a very advertising focused issue of Tell.
- Martin
food for thought.
The Rising Cost of Online Advertising
Skift put out an interesting analysis of Google's earning report and how travel was being affected by increasing online advertising costs. In 2016, Expedia mentioned they were investing more time and money into Facebook advertising. But the big OTAs aren't the problem, they have the resources to diversify their advertising strategy. The question is how will independent hotels and smaller groups manage to diversify their advertising strategy.
GOOGLE EARNINGS
Some tips on Search Ads and SEO
Basic but interesting tips on how to optimize a hotel's search engine visibility (paid and organic). There's still a lot for hotels to improve and even though organic search optimization isn't the cornucopia of revenue it once was - it just must be done.
SEARCH STRATEGY
Accelerating the next big thing
Nobody really knows who the next game changer is in the travel industry, so they're funding incubators accelerators that will help them find it. It's a great thing. Less than a year ago they were pretty hard to find. We need more risk taking entrepreneurs who will build more than, yet another, way to insert (over priced) banner ads on top of GDS screens.
BOOKING BOOSTER
Great Advertising, Moves
Going through the "best of the week" in video ads some weeks ago I was pleasantly surprised to see three travel ads in the top five. Two of them (Booking and Expedia) did something most don't do, promote how travel can help (in our little way) to make the world better. It is worth watching and the booking one was pretty low-budget, everyone can do an ad like that :-)
other good stuff.
Check out the 10 Rules of Hotel Marketing chart
Download the Infographic to writing better taglines.