Booking.com, TripAdvisor, Priceline.com Dominate Paid Search in Travel

AdGooroo reports that about 12,700 advertisers spent more than $750 million on more than 50,000 travel-related keywords in Google AdWords in 2013.

Search marketing intelligence company AdGooroo has released its annual report providing insight into U.S. travel advertising, which was the seventh highest spending paid search category last year.

About 12,700 advertisers spent more than $750 million on more than 50,000 travel-related keywords in Google AdWords in 2013. Those keywords averaged a 4.18 percent click-through rate at an average cost per click of $0.86, AdGooroo reported.

Here are some highlights from the report:

Top 10 Paid Search Advertisers in Travel

AdGooroo collected Google AdWords data for desktop and tablet users for 2012 and 2013. Because the competition is getting stiff, many sites saw a dramatic change in their ranking from one year to the next.

Booking.com led the way in 2013 with 793 million impressions, followed by TripAdvisor (781 million impressions) and Priceline.com (724 million impressions). Here are the full rankings for the top 10 advertisers for both years:

Top Travel Advertisers in Paid Search

The most notable differences from 2012 to 2013 were Booking.com’s increase from seventh to first place and Kayak.com’s drop from first place to fifth.

Booking.com upped its game in 2013 by televising a series of commercials in an attempt to take over control of the U.S. travel market. Interestingly, in 2013 Booking.com was the second highest spending company on paid search among all advertisers (not just travel) in the United Kingdom and France.

Top 20 Most-Clicked Travel Keywords for 2014

As a means of determining buying behaviors of Americans, AdGooroo also provided the top 20 most-clicked keywords from January to April 2014. These keywords are:

  • Expedia
  • Cheap Flights
  • Travelocity
  • Southwest
  • Jetblue
  • Priceline
  • Orbitz
  • US Airways
  • Amtrak
  • Southwest Airlines
  • Delta Airlines
  • Enterprise
  • Carnival Cruise
  • Hotwire
  • Alaska Airlines
  • Vrbo
  • Malaysia Airlines
  • Cheap Tickets
  • Airbnb
  • Royal Caribbean

As you’ll notice, the most-clicked keyword list is largely dominated by travel sites and airlines, not destinations.

Top 10 Destination Keywords for 2014

Even though none of the destinations below made the list of top travel keywords, they do provide insight into where people plan to travel this year. Here are the travel destination keywords that received the most clicks from January to April 2014:

  • Disney World
  • Universal Studios
  • Disneyland
  • Disney
  • Walt Disney World
  • Las Vegas
  • Florida
  • Puerto Rico
  • Hawaii
  • Dominican Republic

Disney is clearly dominating the first half of the destination list, as Disney properties remain some of the top summer destinations for families.

This article was originally published on http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/study/2347118/travel-ppc-top-advertisers-keywords-destinations-report.

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