Trivago Could Kill Controversial Ad Feature That Caused Its Fortunes to Plummet
Skift Take
Trivago is trying to make peace with its largest advertisers, especially the biggest, Booking Holdings. These peace overtures seem to be working for now, but metasearch and advertising can be very fickle things.
Trivago said it is working with its largest advertisers, including Booking Holdings and Expedia Group, on changes that could eventually cause it to eliminate a controversial "relevancy assessment," introduced in 2016, that wreaked havoc with Trivago's financial performance.
In its second quarter financial results announcement, Trivago stated "we have recently been working with our largest advertisers on a large, multimarket test to help us better understand the end-to-end impact on our users’ experience of the aspect of our algorithm that adjusts CPC [cost per click] bids based on the relevance assessment."
Relevancy assessment adjusts advertisers' bids and placement in Trivago, based on the company's assessment of the user experience on advertisers' websites.
In a question-and-answer session with analysts Wednesday, Chief Financial Officer Axel Hefer said those tests include advertisers optimizing the user ex
