Google Finds Ways To Profit From Booking Sites' TV Advertising

Google executives likely aren't big fans of William Shatner as Priceline.com's The Negotiator, the Trivago Guy or Hotels.com's Captain Obvious of television advertising notoriety. Or maybe they are on a personal level, but see potential revenue from these online travel agency TV advertising campaigns leaking out the door. Major online travel sites such as Booking.com, Expedia, Hotels.com, Trivago, TripAdvisor, and Priceline have been heavily advertising on TV over the last couple of years, and TripAdvisor and the Priceline Group revealed in the past week that they intend to increase their spending on TV advertising in 2015. All of these companies have finite marketing budgets, of course, so money spent on TV is dollars, euros or reals not spent on Google paid search or Google Hotel Finder ads. All of this occurs as Priceline Group CEO Darren Huston revealed this week that he sees TV advertising as a breakthrough that reduces the dependence of the company, one of Google's largest customers, on paid search. Don't Shed Tears for Google Google generated nearly $14.7 billion in total advertising revenue in the third quarter, and that included a 17% year over year increase in paid clicks, so its search empire will not crumble because a handful of online travel agencies are taking to the airwaves and cable wires like never before