As metasearch marketers say goodbye to 2017 and prepare for 2018, one question on everyone’s mind is, “What is new in metasearch for 2018?” One answer to that question is Bing Hotel Ads!
In 2017, Bing rolled out a controlled beta test of their new Hotel Ads offering to select advertisers. With the start of the new year, they are gearing up to bring this beta test into a general release. This is a big change in the marketplace giving customers more booking options when booking a hotel through Bing.com and giving advertisers a new metasearch channel to directly display ads to Bing customers.
What will Bing Hotel Ads look like?
A sample of Bing’s new Hotel Ads experience is below. Some key features of the product include:
- Options to sort search results by “Best Match”, “Price”, and “Rating”
- Hotel cards with multiple feature images
- A TripAdvisor integration that clearly displays number of reviews and TripAdvisor ranking to the user
- An interactive map fueled by Bing Maps that allows users to refine and customize their search
What does this mean for advertisers?
The launch of Bing Hotel Ads means that advertisers have a new metasearch channel to directly interact with potential customers. Creating and managing an efficient campaign will require excellence in the key areas that come together to form what we call the revenue equation. We describe it as:
Revenue = f(Demand, Core Data, Distribution, Optimization)
Demand
Think of demand at the hotel level as the total potential volume for a hotel or set of hotels. Bing Hotel Ads has the potential to bring a new set of customers into the digital marketing strategy for an advertiser that has not been directly advertising with them before. As metasearch grows, finding new and growing groups of customers is an important part of maintaining a healthy portfolio. Demand is also heavily influenced by hotel information like customer reviews. Bing Hotel Ads have a unique value proposition for customers because they have integrated customer reviews in a few, very visible ways on the hotel card and through the sorting options. This means to be successful, it will be crucial that hotels have plenty of positive reviews.
