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More on Google Promoted Hotel Ads

June 11, 2012 | Hotel Marketing

Based on our last weeks article, we received many questions from our readers on Google's new Promote Hotel Ads. Here are some answers we received from Google, as well as links to other articles on the same topic.

Many readers contacted us, asking how they could start using Google's new Promoted Hotel ads product. Here is what we learned from a Google spokesperson:

- The Promoted Hotel Ad format is based on Google's Hotel Price Ads. Advertisers participating in Hotel Price Ads are automatically available to show. It is not possible to target this ad format specifically. Promoted hotels are chosen based on a combination of bid and quality score, similar to promoted ads on Google;

- Both hotels and OTAs can participate in the Hotel Price Ads beta; data from this beta displays in Google Hotel Finder;

- The Hotel Price Ads beta is a way for hotels and online travel agencies to reach users looking at hotel results across a range of Google properties including Maps and Web Search. The Hotel Finder experiment is another way for users to search for hotels, and another source of qualified leads to partners through the Hotel Price Ads program.

- Google is working with a limited number of online travel agencies and hotel brands as part of its Hotel Price Ads beta, and those partners provide the price and availability data for display across Google products, including this experimental product Hotel Finder. So, if a hotel is not part of the Hotel Price Ads Beta, they would not show up in Hotel Finder.

Google’s Promoted Hotels opens the bidding war

With the rollout of Hotel Price Ads, OTAs can play a prominent role everywhere a hotel appears through Google’s suite of products, whether that be on local pages, organic search results, maps or Hotel Finder. When users search for a hotel, they now will likely encounter booking opportunities via the highest bidder, which often will be an OTA.

The news isn’t all good for OTAs, however. Because it lists real-time pricing and availability information, Hotel Finder takes some clout away from meta-search engines, sources said.

Whereas users might have visited Kayak or Expedia to search generally for hotels in New York (regardless of whether they also booked on those platforms), for example, those same users can now get all the information they need from Hotel Finder.

Get the full story at HotelNewsNow.com

How evil are Google's new paid shopping search results?

There’s been a lot of press this week about Google’s Promoted Hotels program - and with good reason. The experimental new ad format signals a more aggressive push into the distribution space from Google, which previously was tip-toeing around the sidelines.

While the likes of Marriott International and InterContinental Hotels Group and Hilton Worldwide and the other big boys and gals have the coffers and marketing savvy to use Google’s ever-evolving platforms, John Q. Hotelier, owner of one or two roadside properties in Everytown, USA, gets left behind.

Will his properties be listed? Eventually. (Right now the still-experimental-after-a-year-of-testing Hotel Finder only partners with the major chains, OTAs and other big players.) But they’ll never receive the kind of placement and prominence as their competition.

Get the full story at HotelNewsNow.com, and Forbes

Read also "A closer look at Google Hotel Finder’s latest update"

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