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Intent Media launches sponsored search network for hotels

April 28, 2011 | Hotel Marketing

Intent Media launched its Sponsored Search Network, a marketing tool for the lodging industry that enables hotels to reach prospective travelers across a network of websites during the hotel search and book experience. The network includes launch partners Orbitz and Travelocity.

The network includes launch partners Orbitz and Travelocity.com whose customers will benefit from relevant advertisements from participating hotels.

Following its beta launch in 2010, the network includes over 1000 hotel properties actively using SSN. Participating hotels are able to target potential guests with images for their properties on the basis of markets they serve and for periods when they have availability. Those ads then show up in the corresponding results when travelers search for hotels matching those criteria.

“The evolution of online advertising has been a constant drive for relevance,” said Richard Harris, CEO of Intent Media. “What could be more relevant than getting in front of customers at the point of sale? Our hotel advertisements served by the Sponsored Search Network align with a traveler’s unique search for the perfect lodging experience.”

Hotels wishing to advertise through SSN set up their ads in an easy to use interface where they also manage their bids and budgets for the destination and booking period combinations they wish to target. The Intent Media platform powering the network also manages the auction system, helps hotels optimize their advertising content, and serves the advertisements with the best combination of bid price and relevance to the consumer across all participating sites in the network. In addition to Orbitz.com and Travelocity.com, the networks advertisements are also served on ebookers.com and CheapTickets.com.

“Getting in front of people looking for a hotel is good, but to get in front of a traveler looking for lodging with a heightened level of targeting at this point in their purchase path, that’s ideal,” said Don Zimmer, Director of Sales & Marketing at the Astor Crowne Plaza New Orleans, “We’ve been advertising through the system for the past few months and find that SSN has been the most cost effective and productive guest acquisition vehicle we’ve seen.”

“Retailers have the best, and therefore the most valuable, access to understanding what a consumer is looking for during the act of shopping,” added Harris, “Until now, retailers haven’t typically had a means to capture the value of this intent, and our network and Intent Media’s platform technology enables them to do so at the appropriate scale desired by advertisers.”

Related Link: Intent Media

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