Expedia offers new advertising product

March 02, 2009 | Online Travel

Expedia Media Solutions, the advertising sales division of Expedia, has introduced a new behavioral marketing product called PassportAds, which gives advertisers an effective way to reach in-market travel consumers throughout the trip purchasing lifecycle.

Expedia.com reaches 50 percent of all online travel shoppers, allowing PassportAds to deliver unparalleled reach to this highly qualified audience across the Internet using anonymous visitor data.

The first program of its kind in travel advertising, PassportAds anonymously identifies in-market travelers through “explicit” search behaviors, such as a search for hotels in Hawaii. PassportAds then uses this anonymous search data to build segments of highly qualified travel shoppers, and targets them with controlled frequency throughout their decision-making lifecycle. Unlike typical contextual buys, advertisers can appear in front of these audience segments anywhere online.

“PassportAds offers unrivaled reach to consumers actively in-market for travel. Now advertisers can create highly tailored messages that target travelers during the entire vacation planning and booking process and throughout the entire online experience - from reading the news to checking their weather forecast or shopping for clothes,” said Doug Miller, vice president of Global Media Solutions, Expedia. “We’re focused on offering clients the ability to deliver behaviorally and contextually relevant advertising to the largest and most valuable audience of in-market travel consumers in the world.”

PassportAds builds on the success of Expedia’s bid for placement product, TravelAds. TravelAds uses shopper search behavior to deliver highly targeted advertising at the point-of-sale. Introduced in 2008, TravelAds offers hotel partners the ability to differentiate their property by bidding for premium placement within hotel search results on Expedia.com and Hotels.com. Both TravelAds and PassportAds allow advertisers to capitalize on the rich data generated by users when they search for travel.

Expedia Media Solutions helps advertisers reach a significant share of the online travel market, providing advertisers access to the 23.3 million monthly unique users that visit Expedia, Inc. Web sites and offering solutions that harness the power of these consumers’ search and shopping behaviors.

PassportAds and TravelAds are two key products in Expedia’s Media Solutions portfolio. They represent the company’s efforts to help travel and non-travel brand advertisers tap the unmatched value of Expedia’s global online travel marketplace. In addition to PassportAds and TravelAds, Expedia Media Solutions offers myriad opportunities to reach shoppers with a demonstrated interest in travel, including banner ads, sponsorship opportunities, promotional activities, placement in Theme Stores and more, helping companies get the most value out of their marketing dollar.