TripAdvisor Plays Meta on Meta Marketing Game With Google
Skift Take
TripAdvisor still isn't crazy about Google emphasizing its own travel businesses ahead of those of competitors. Still, in the wacky world of online travel marketing, metas will advertise in other metas when the financials work in their favor. User experience? It isn't always the best.
TripAdvisor is back as an advertiser in Google Hotels, and so are its user reviews despite the company's long-standing protests that Google unfairly emphasizes its own travel businesses to the detriment of competitors.
Speaking at a Goldman Sachs technology conference in New York City last month, TripAdvisor CFO Ernst J. Teunissen said the company has been advertising in Google Hotels, and will invest in that marketing channel "as long as the ROIs (returns on investment) are good."
Teunissen said Google Hotels is a "relatively small channel for us in the grand scheme of things, but one where we have been investing."
None of this is earth-shattering in terms of business impact, but it opens a window into the sometimes-cantankerous Google-TripAdvisor relationship. It also sheds light on why comparison-shopping sites see opportunity in advertising on competitors' comparison-shopping sites.
When metas advertise or don't on other meta sites
Consider some background about this: Google Hotels is largely a metasearch engine, as is TripAdvisor. With some exceptions, online travel agencies and hotels brands advertise their rates in Google Hotels through paid links; consumers select those links on Google, navigate to the advertisers' sites such as TripAdvisor or Kayak, and then transfer anew to an online travel agency or hotel site to complete their
