Expedia Is Once Again Spending Big to Advertise on Trivago
Photo Credit: This is the Trivago 'Girl' — Australia-style. Parent company Expedia is outspending the Priceline Group in Trivago advertising spend, reversing a two-year trend when it didn't. Trivago
Skift Take
Travel metasearch sites such as Kayak, Trivago, TripAdvisor and Skyscanner would fall on hard times if they weren't attracting advertising spend from their parents' -- or former parents' -- rivals.
On its path toward an initial public offering last year, hotel price-comparison site Trivago turned heads when it disclosed that its largest advertising customer was not parent-company Expedia and its brands, as was expected.
Instead, it turned out, the Priceline Group, which owns rival Kayak, was the largest spender in Trivago's hotel search results.
In fact, the Priceline Group and its assorted brands, including Booking.com, Agoda, Priceline, and Rentalcars.com, accounted for 43 percent, or some $352.5 million, of Trivago's total revenue in 2016, while Expedia companies such as Expedia, Hotels.com, Orbitz, and Travelocity, chipped in 36 percent, or around $295.1 million, according to Trivago financial filings.
But a new report, Quarterly Meta Tracker, from financial firm Raymond James, states that Expedia reversed the pattern, which had been the norm in 2015 and 2016, and in the first quarter of 2017 spent four times as much as the Priceline Group in the Trivago hotel-search
