Year End Trends in Metasearch and the New "Bid Optimizer" Tool at HeBS Digital

[Jason Price]

In Q4 2014, metasearch continued to evolve with both Google Hotel Finder and TripAdvisor driving the bulk of metasearch activities for North American hotels, resorts, and casinos in our portfolio. In Q4, HeBS Digital launched a next generation marketing tool inside the metasearch platform that allows the team to manage and optimize spend, CPC, and ROI. This tool is called the "Bid Optimizer" and focused on finding and correcting the right CPC bid for the volume of traffic, a more accurate budget, and desired ROI. Changes in results are already apparent by just comparing the portfolio from November to December. By using conversion data from previous months we are able to set bids that have reasonable ROAS expectations.

Nov Avg CPC

• Google HPA: $7.47
• TripAdvisor:$5.34

Dec MTD, Avg CPC

• Google HPA: $5.99
• TripAdvisor: $4.09

Nov Avg ROI

• Google HPA: 453%
• TripAdvisor: 546%

Dec MTD, Avg ROI

• Google HPA: 560%
• TripAdvisor: 675%

Two important take away points with metasearch this month. First, the profile of the hotel matters. We have shown from managing a metasearch portfolio of nearly 1000 hotels that properties which perform better with higher ROI are hotels with high brand awareness and we have most growth come from those participating in Google HPA. Why? Consumers search on Google for the hotel they are looking for and connect via HPA. Good brand  awareness – Ex. Pacifica Hotels and Morgan’s Hotel Group - lead potential guests to search for them on Google’s HPA platform. For TripAdvisor the consumer is still looking at reviews and evaluating the hotel. "I don't necessarily know the URL of the hotel I want but I know the hotel I want and will go to Google." When consumers go to Google to conduct the search, naturally the hotel price ad appears in the results and captures customers at that point thereby capturing that qualified lead.