Hotel Ads Best Practices

Transcription

1 Hotel Ads Best Practices

2 Table of Contents Basic Prep for success... Page 3 Start using Hotel Ads Center... Page 3 Bid by percentage and bid above the reserve... Page 4 Add conversion tracking to gain actionable insights... Page 5 Intermediary Group hotels to better manage your bids... Page 6 Make Bid Multipliers work for you... Page 7 Advanced Take advantage of performance reporting... Page 8 Focus on performance to achieve max return... Page 10 Resources Hotel Ads Best Practices 2

3 Basic Prep for success Launch with a significant % of properties The more properties are activated with bids, the more opportunities you have to capture clicks. Enforce price accuracy You must display the accurate total price for all itineraries at all times. Total price refers to all fees required to book the hotel room, including base rate, taxes and additional fees. When a user clicks on an ad and price combination on Google, the partner booking page should display the same total price as seen on Google. Start using Hotel Ads Center Hotel Ads Center provides a user-friendly interface for partners to manage all aspects of your interaction with Hotel Ads. You can manage groups and bids, and access the pricing, hotel, and diagnostic reporting data for your ads. Check out Hotel Ads Center User Guide for an overview of Hotel Ads Center. Add access for your account teams and begin using Hotel Ads Center by visiting partnerdash.google.com. Hotel Ads Best Practices 3

4 Bid by percentage and bid above the reserve Use percentage-based bids Hotel prices change all the time. Use percentage-based bids to ensure alignment between investment and potential revenue. Bid above the reserve By bidding above the reserve you ll be more competitive. We suggest bidding at least at 1% of the property price. Even if your rates are competitive, you will lose the auction if your bid is not. In your daily performance report, any property with a price bucket of -1 is ineligible as it is below the reserve price. Edit bids offline Hotel Ads Center provides bulk editing options for you to manage bids in scale. Hotel Ads Best Practices 4

5 Add conversion tracking to gain actionable insights Conversion tracking can show you what happens when users visit your website after clicking on Hotel Ads: whether they booked, which hotel they booked, the value of the booking, etc. For comprehensive insights on your performance, implement conversion tracking for all platforms desktop, mobile, tablet anywhere users visit your website from. Use conversion performance metrics to adjust your campaign strategies Available metrics include number of conversions, conversion rate, cost per acquisition (CPA), return on ad spend (ROAS), average booking value, average length of stay, advance booking window and revenue per click. These metrics surface new insights within your reporting, helping you make better campaign management decisions and improve overall return. For additional information on conversion tracking please visit Help Center. Hotel Ads Best Practices 5

6 Intermediate Group hotels to better manage your bids Group properties into Hotel Groups to manage them together This will help you manage your campaigns efficiently while maximizing ROI. You apply the same set of rules to every property in a Hotel Group think about how you d like to structure your bids and create your Hotel Group(s) accordingly. Some basic methods of grouping hotels include: by brand, market, and conversion rate. You could also apply the more advanced methods such as by occupancy, promotional, event-based, distribution channels. Group hotels by conversion rate if bidding by percentage Consider grouping hotels based on conversion rate if you are using percentage based bids. Properties that convert at similar rates should have similar percentage bids. Hotel Ads Best Practices 6

7 Make Bid Multipliers work for you Learn about Bid Multipliers and apply them For each of the hotel groups you set up in Hotel Ads Center, assign appropriate Bid Multipliers by each of the core dimensions (e.g. Google site, device and user country). Review and update your Bid Multipliers once per quarter to account for seasonality and shifts in user behavior. Focus on your most lucrative Length of Stay Review conversion rate by Length of Stay and decrease the Bid Multiplier for length of stay longer than X nights. Moreover, to compete for a longer length of stay without breaking the bank, decrease the Length of Stay multiplier when the number of night being applied to is higher. Hotel Ads Best Practices 7

8 Advanced Take advantage of performance reporting Daily and weekly reports show how your properties performed by device, Google site and more. For additional information on Hotel Ads reporting please visit Help Center. Customize display of performance data Hotel Ads Center lets you view performance data by impression share, bid rate and so on. Customize columns to slice data and view stats by hotel group, hotel ID, Google site, device type, ad slot, user country and date and adjust your bidding strategies accordingly. Check impression share for insight into available opportunities For insight into relative opportunities available, look at impression share in the Hotel Ads Center. Hotel Ads Best Practices 8

9 Ensure your strongest-converting properties are winning one of the top two slots In your daily performance report, check to see whether the majority of impressions for these properties are coming from the most prominent position. Review these reports at least twice a week to understand where your traffic is coming from and how it was addressed. For example, if you won the 1st slot, but your property didn t show, or if your rate was good, but bid was too low. Capture missed opportunities with Opportunity Report Weekly Opportunity Reports show the opportunities that have been missed because of limited auction participation and/or bidding. Download the report from Hotel Ads Center and find out whether you are maximizing the number of eligible impressions. Ensuring full participation is the first step toward capturing greater clickshare. Watch out for feed-related factors that could be limiting your impressions, such as failure to provide a robust set of rates, mobile-optimized deep links or localized landing pages. Hotel Ads Best Practices 9

10 Ask the right questions of your performance metrics To get the most out of the performance metrics and improve your strategies, ask yourself these key questions: Focus on performance to achieve max return Bid by profitability Increase bids for profitable hotels, decrease bids for non-profitable ones. Apply and adjust Bid Multipliers according to performance metrics Google can provide benchmark data for 7 target countries for eligible impressions, CTR, CPC. Use these insights to evaluate the potential growth opportunities in your Hotel Ads performance. Bid Multipliers help you optimize in specific areas where performance is lacking. Understand your performance preferably Conversion Rate, if not, then relative CTR by user country, device, Google site, length of stay and adjust Bid Multipliers accordingly. Hotel Ads Best Practices 10

11 Resources Hotel Ads Center partnerdash.google.com Hotel Ads Center User Guide support.google.com/hotelprices/answer/ Help Center support.google.com/hotelprices Training Video Series Case Studies Hilton Worldwide case study Premier Inn case study goo.gl/jgikrk goo.gl/epgudz goo.gl/ddm0d0 Hotel Ads Best Practices 11