Google improves Promoted Hotels to increase visibility and sales

As we mentioned a few weeks ago, Google has introduced a new type of paid advertising, available on Google Maps and Google Travel.

These new paid spaces will be activated for destination searches such as; “hotels in Madrid”, “hotels near Madrid airport”, “hotels in central Madrid”, etc., as long as your hotel is located in that locality, or for searches with specific hotel attributes or characteristics such as “hotels in Madrid with a pool”, “adults only hotels in Mallorca”, etc.

Formerly known as Promoted Hotel, Google has decided to revamp the entire product and relaunch it as Property Promotion Ads (as we exclusively announced from Roiback). This new type of paid advertising represents a great opportunity to offer more visibility and sales to your hotel.

As a Google Premier Partner, Roiback was one of the few companies chosen to be part of the Beta phase (testing and improvement period) of Property Promotion Ads. Below, we present its main features and why it can be a significant competitive advantage for your hotel.

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How does Property Promotion Ads benefit your hotel?

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1. Offers more visibility: You will be able to bid for spaces that you could previously only access organically within Google Maps and Google Travel.

2. Allows you to reach new customers: You will be able to bid on generic searches (e.g. “Hotels in Madrid”), capturing customers who have not yet decided on a specific hotel.

3. The ads are exclusive: In Property Promotion Ads, only the ad of the partner who wins the bid is published, so only your hotel's ad will be seen without competing with OTAs, offering exclusive visibility in this way.

4. Allows a wide variety of advanced bids: PPA allows you to use all the bid multipliers offered by Google Hotel Ads, meaning that you can optimize by device, market, days in advance, or length of stay, among others. This offers great flexibility in your optimization strategies. For example, to face the Covid-19 crisis, we could bid only for stays 3 months in advance which, added to a flexible cancellation or payment policy, could be a very good option to achieve long-term reservations.

5. Offers more flexibility: It can be an interesting and effective tool for seasonal hotels that wish to promote an opening and maximize their visibility at any time.

Frequently asked questions about Property Promotion Ads

- Is Property Promotion Ads the same as Google Hotel Ads?

Property Promotion Ads is an extension of Google Hotel Ads. Both Property Promotion Ads and Google Hotel Ads start from the same Google Hotel Ads integration. Property Promotion Ads is simply a new way to achieve more visibility for your property within Google Maps and Google Travel, with a format very similar to the classic Google Ads.

- Is it possible to start using Property Promotion Ads now? What are the requirements?

Yes, Property Promotion Ads can be used from today. The only requirement is that you contact your booking engine or connectivity partner to configure and activate campaigns. Your booking engine must have certification and connectivity with Google Hotel Ads; the hotel does not need to have a previous campaign created in GHA to activate PPA.

- How many sponsored spaces exist with Property Promotion Ads?

At the moment, there are 2 sponsored spaces or “slots” where the ads are displayed, but it is possible that after a few months Google will decide to expand it as it is a product in the process of experimentation.

- What bidding model does Property Promotion Ads use?

The most recent development regarding this type of campaign is that they are now available in all 3 types of bidding models that we have in Google HA:

1. CPC
2. CPA or Commission (Pay) per Conversion
3. Commission (Pay) per Stay

- Can I have Google Hotel Ads campaigns on a commissionable model and Property Promotion Ads campaigns on a CPC model at the same time?

Yes, both actions are compatible and also recommended.

- Can I use the same budget that I already have configured for standard Google Hotel Ads campaigns?

This only makes sense with the CPC model since we don't configure any campaign budget for the other two bidding models, but it is possible through the budget sharing functionality of the Google Ads tool itself.

- Can Property Promotion Ads be used for brand searches (containing the name of your hotel)?

No, Google Hotel Ads campaigns already exist for these.

- Can I select the keywords to bid on?

No, you cannot. Google will show your hotel based on destination keyword combinations that make sense in terms of the address data you have active in Google My Business.

- Can a special callout be configured for PPA campaigns?

No, callouts do not appear in sponsored ads. The texts that appear published are brief highlighted descriptions from the hotel's GMB listing itself, and they cannot be managed from PPA campaigns.

- Can PPA campaigns be segmented by market?

Yes, we can activate them only for certain markets, such as the hotel's main markets or only the local market in the current situation. However, this strategy is only recommended when the campaigns are active on a CPC model, since with a CPA or Commission model, the more visibility the campaign has, the better, since you will only pay if there are reservations, and with a commission model, only if they are consumed.

- Are clicks charged twice in CPC campaigns? That is, once when you click on the PPA and again on the hotel ad?

No, the click is only charged when the customer is redirected to the hotel's website; the first click on the ad is free.

- Are PPA campaigns created from the Google Ads platform?

Yes, since January 2020, no Google HA campaign has been managed from the old platform (Hotel Ads Center); all optimization is done from Google Ads.

What can I expect from PPA? Will many reservations or visits come in?

As we have explained, this is a very new product and space, and we will soon have more information on the impact on traffic and sales. We must also consider that we are experiencing an atypical moment of depressed demand. We will see its potential in a few months. We must warn you of something very important: PPA is a product much closer to the moment of consideration and inspiration for a customer, and therefore the conversion rates will be completely different from those of standard GHA. According to Google, the KPIs we are used to for brand campaigns in Search or standard GHA are very different from the results of PPA. We can say that PPA will probably have similar ratios to generic Search or Display campaigns. Even so, the volume of searches and results in maps and travel for this type of more local and generic Keywords is so brutal that it will surely be very beneficial for hotels.

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HOW DO PROPERTY PROMOTION ADS LOOK ON GOOGLE MAPS?

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PPA ads carry an "Ad" label to differentiate them from organic results.

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HOW DO PROPERTY PROMOTION ADS LOOK ON GOOGLE TRAVEL?

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GOOGLE TRAVEL VIEW WHEN CLICKING ON A PPA AD

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We only see the official website of the hotel, and it is located within the "Sponsored" tab. On the other hand, if you arrive at Google Travel from an ad that is NOT a Property Promotion Ad, the availability is shared with the rest of the competitors.

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HOW IS A PROPERTY PROMOTION ADS CAMPAIGN CREATED?

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STEP 1

Access the Google Ads console and click on "new campaign".

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STEP 2

Click on “Create a campaign without a specific objective”.

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STEP 3

Click on “Promote your hotels on Google Search and Maps”

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STEP 4

Once the campaign type has been selected, you can now create the PPA campaign itself, where you can configure the desired budget, language, geolocation, and bidding.

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In summary, Property Promotion Ads would be similar to what Tripadvisor has launched with its Sponsored Placement Direct Booking, with the difference that, although both platforms are similar in their concept as price comparison engines, they have a different use in the customer's purchase cycle. Perhaps Google Hotel Ads is closer to the final purchase phase, which explains its higher conversion ratio.

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To start testing Property Promotion Ads, do not hesitate to contact us. We will be happy to help you!

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