Why Social Media Won’t ‘Nudge Ahead’ of Travel Booking and Planning Channels.

IN-DEPTH: Interview with Doug Miller, Global VP, Media Solutions, Expedia – Online media owners say travel marketers need to look at online advertising more holistically.It is strongly believed that combining brand and supervise over response together online is the key to accomplishment. In fact, it is also being highlighted that traditionally, online has been held to a much more stringent metric than offline channels and it is evenly bought with a very bitty approach.EyeforTravels Ritesh Gupta recently spoke to Doug Miller, Global VP, Media Solutions, Expedia about the last-click model, the social media vs travel booking and preparation channels debate and lot more. Excerpts: It is acknowledged that advertisers favoured online channels over the last couple of years. How do you assess the current approach towards online advertising?Doug Miller: I reckon the last-touch model favoured by travel marketers is flawed. It disproportionately rewards low-funnel impressions or clicks from search engines and ad networks. Travel marketers are currently ignoring 80 percent or more of the online touch points that lead to a conversion. For model, we know that a fantastic number of travelers shop Expedia before booking somewhere else. If you learn the Fairmont Orchid on Expedia, spend 20 minutes reading reviews and determining that its right for you, then bounce to a search engine before booking somewhere else, did Expedia help make the sale? Of way, but the last-click model ignores the influencers. Leading travel marketers, ad agencies and technology firms are on a path to overcome the challenge, and deliver more holistic views, but these changes will take time. As these solutions come online, and multi-touch attribution is increasingly doable, it will bring more travel marketing dollars online, and change the online mix.According to SEM specialist, Greenlight, search as a standalone channel can be fantastic for delivering high ROIs and tight CPA, due to its ability to target at a very granular and specific level. But, as a branding tool, it is not so efficient and depending on the industry, an advertisers ability to convert high core generic endeavor may in fact depend on their brand being recognisable outside of the Search environment. Whats your take on this? Doug Miller: Like search engines, Expedia and Hotels.com help travellers learn hotels through search. Our encounter suggests strong travel brands tend to convert better at the point-of-sale. Moreover, strong travel brands also delight in improved billboard effects from OTA point-of-sale advertising. One study for a top global hotel brand showed a 191 percent increase in supervise over-bookings among travel shoppers exposed to point-of-sale ads.There are many independent hotels that dont spend much on brand building beyond Search or OTA point-of-sale marketing. If these brands do flawlessly, deliver a fantastic travel encounter, the customer will develop positive associations with the brand. On the other hand, a brand can be hyper-relevant in Search, and fail in execution, and the customer will develop a unenthusiastic association with the brand. Consider Search an amplifier, rather than enabler, of both excellent and terrible branding. If the full encounter is positive, Search will help drive more positive brand experiences. If the encounter is unenthusiastic, Search will just drive more unenthusiastic experiences.Facebook reached an vital milestone for the week ending March 13, 2010 as it became the most visited website for the week. How do you expect the power of social media to nudge ahead of some of the traditional online travel booking and preparation channels especially with integration of real-time feeds from Facebook and Chirrup on search engines? Doug Miller: Its amusing to reckon of online travel channels as traditional. That happened quick. I feel so yesterday. My view is that travel booking and preparation sites lead in aggregating travel intention data. What does that mean? For numerous years now, Federate Medias John Battelle has talked about search engines making a massive Database of Intentions. All our Google searches, aggregated together, can tell us a fantastic deal about what we want. More recently, John has gone on to suggest that sites like Facebook add who I am and who I know to the database of intentions. Sites like Expedia, Amazon and eBay add signals about what I buy, and so on. Travellers browse, search and buy with Expedia sites. They signal through our channels heres the travel I want and heres the travel I will buy on a global extent. Therefore, I dont believe that social media will nudge ahead of travel booking and preparation channels. Rather, search, social and commerce channels will become more and more complementary, and new partnerships will form, as intention signals accelerate to fuel online media and commerce. The signals of heres the travel I want and here are the people I know will find new ways of working together to increase travel preparation and booking. Travelers get more relevant offers and travel marketers will learn new opportunities. These models are coming around the confront. Marketers counting ones from hotels admit that many advertisers have in fact switched their offline advertising to online, which has resulted in an increase in CPC. In many search terms, they are now competing with double as many advertisers as they used to. It is becoming much harder to achieve high ROIs and they now have to focus more on long tail terms as generics are just not a viable option anymore. How do you assess the situation?Doug Miller: Generics havent been viable for a lot of players for a long time because of poor conversion, which is sometimes a function of poor or limited supply. Supplier-supervise over is going to have a harder time converting a customer on generic terms than a reseller because of breadth of selection. This doesnt preclude many from trying, even if, for better or worse. Sometimes, a supplier can make up the conversion gap with better margin and add-on revenue, but not always.The long tail is just getting longer. To manage it, you have to have significant ability to extent your programmes and the ability to manage bids through ambiguity and data sparseness. Its hard to set a bid for keywords that get a click every other week or month. Its even harder to bid millions of keywords like this.Oversimplifying, suppliers have two choices spend on salaries & marketing dollars directly against acquiring these more expensive conversions or allow resellers to bear the burden and cost. Its a simple break-even analysis for them. Plus, hotels can now even bid for premium search placement on Expedia and Hotels.com through our TravelAds auction platform. Its just a matter of where resellers are most comfortable with yield management through Google or their partners marketplaces.Record is a growing area, with strengths and weaknesses. Surveillance a record takes time and you cant skim or filter them very easily to find the ones most relevant to you but theres always that ancient saying that a picture speaks louder than words. The ability to share what a hotel in fact looks like, what another traveler in fact experienced person, is incredibly powerful. How do you assess the current investment benchmarks and RoI?Doug Miller: The next real innovation for online travel selling lies at the intersection of creativity and technology. We need to invest more here. We evenly overlook the emotional drivers of shopping and transactions. Today, selling travel online is very rational and linear. By contrast, record and forms of online rich media allow brands to join emotionally and aesthetically with customers – to tell tales. Hawaii and San Diego gained material share on Expedia using point of sale sight, sound and motion media, our StorePoint Expandables programme. Likewise, Bings visual search has fantastic potential in travel.Im a huge fan of Kevin Roberts of Saatchi & Saatchi. I reckon hes right about screens and the power of sight, sound and motion to go us to act. Roberts suggests that tales told with sight, sound and motion are the way through information overload. When tales are set against information, the report wins. I agree, and we all have work to do in travel. Behaviour analytics help in understanding and predicting customers desires and to more effectively serve relevant content and products in real time, ultimately increasing satisfaction and conversion. How do you assess the adoption of behaviour analytics at this stage?Doug Miller: This is the future of digital travel marketing. Travel marketers want to join with known travel shoppers, especially during the window that theyre in-market to book. Remarketing based on recent browsing and shopping behaviors makes this doable, and it works. Travel marketers can reach travelers in the vacation preparation and shopping process with point of sale marketing, and if they dont book right then, marketers can now extend campaigns across the Internet. The practice of remarketing is speedily accelerating in travel. Moreover, its converging with real-time ad buying, dynamic-creative solutions and SEM science. Its an exciting time. Online Marketing Strategies for Travel USA 2010 Conference Doug Miller, Global VP, Media Solutions, Expedia, is scheduled to speak at the Online Marketing Strategies for Travel USA conference which will take place in Miami (2-3 June).For more information, click here: http://events.eyefortravel.com/online-marketing/agenda.asp Or contact:Gina BaillieVP Global Marketing & Events+44 (0) 207 375 7197 (UK)gina@eyefortravel.com

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