After advertiser demands, TripAdvisor rolls out sponsored ads for restaurants
TripAdvisor has rolled out a sponsored ads product for restaurants, fulfilling a demand that advertisers have been voicing for over a year.
TripAdvisor unveils its sponsored ad product
Delivering it has been one of the biggest undertakings the team has managed to date. TripAdvisor is touting to restaurant owners the ability to promote their businesses to millions of potential diners by driving traffic to their TripAdvisor listing through sponsored placements within the site’s native search results.
Diners can be targeted based on location as well as on search queries such as average meal price, cuisine type and timing of meals (breakfast, lunch or dinner). These users will see ads appear in the first spot of a relevant restaurant category on TripAdvisor, as well as in the top spot of relevant restaurant search results.
There are over four million restaurant partners on the service across the globe but it is not open to everyone. Services with ratings under three “bubbles” will be denied access to it as a means of ensuring that a certain quality of outlet is placed in front of users. In short, this delivers value to users by connecting them with venues that are keen to be seen.
Speaking to The Drum, Jelensperger, senior vice president of TripAdvisor Restaurants, said: “The ideal situation is to have enough restaurants using the platform with the right return on investment. It is a product with transparency, an ROI, and they can stop whenever they want. We hope they get value from us.”
The feature will most likely be adopted by services that already work well cultivating content and a presence on the site, these companies “know the importance of TripAdvisor for their business, it delivers amazing marketing,” added Jelensperger.
The service will be promoted to members through a “management centre” where site administrators will login in several times a week to review critiques and more. For a monthly fee, they can opt into the service and be served to users across a number of criteria like location, cuisine and more. On the metric side, success is being measured on a cost per click basis (CPC). Although basic in nature upon launch, there will be a richer depth of data to come from the feature linking these clicks to views on the phone number, venue address, menus and of course, bookings through TripAdvisor.
Marlo Tremaglio, marketing director for restaurants at TripAdvisor, made the claim that the site throws up a more valuable audience than Google or Facebook.
“The best marketing gets to the right customer at the right time in the right place. These are hungry consumers ready to make a decision, they are beyond casual web users,” she said.
“We are further down the funnel than a Facebook or a Google, our typical browser is of debatably higher value.”
This is part of the value equation TripAdvisor is communicating to potential clients.
Another is its volume of tourists or non-local users that may not be able to access the area’s best eateries through Facebook or Google in the way that a knowledgeable local could.
“Our unique thing, there are some other options for local diners, but we offer exposure to locals and travellers, we are the number one resource for a place to eat away from home. These tourists are arguably a diner with a higher budget, and a more immediate need.”