Google Expands Travel Ads With Real Time Data

Google’s updating its Travel Ads in search with additional informational options, while it’s also testing out expanded location promotions in-stream.

First off, Google will now enable all travel advertisers to include additional feed data, including prices, dates, ratings and images, based on real-time info from your business.

As you can see in this example, travel ads will now also be able to include hotel prices, for example, or hotel options, based on the data feed from your linked Hotel Center account. That could make your promotions more enticing, and drive more clicks.

Indeed, Google’s been testing out enhanced data feed travel ads over the past year, and says that they’ve helped to drive more interest.

“Since introducing Travel Feeds in Search Ads to a small set of hotel advertisers last year, we’ve seen up to a 20% increase in click-through rates when advertisers participate in our full range of formats.”

A 20% increase is definitely worth noting, and for travel brands this could be a valuable consideration.

Hotel businesses can link their Google Ads and Hotel Center accounts to enable the data feed, which will power these new formats (more info here). Much like a retail inventory feed, the Hotel Center connects real-time info into your Google promotions.

Google’s also experimenting with expanding Travel Feeds in Search Ads which will also highlight things to do, car rentals and events.

It’s another way to utilize dynamic feed data to drive more interest, and it could be a good option to get more attention for your promotions.

“For advertisers with a travel feed already linked in Google Ads, both new and existing Search Ads campaigns will automatically include relevant information from the feed. For advertisers who don’t have a feed linked, set up is one-time and straightforward.”

Eventually, Google’s hoping to expand these dynamic info formats to more ad types, to provide more topical, variable cues to spark more interest, which could drive more clicks, and pique the interest of searchers.

It’s an interesting concept, and it’ll be interesting to see where Google goes with this, and what ad types it thinks could benefit from dynamic data feeds.

Google’s expanding its data feed listings to all hotel advertisers from today. More info here.