Some key takeaways relevant to hotels include:
Google Travel is now live on desktop. Previously available only on mobile, this service allows users to organise flights, hotels, sightseeing, and packages in one travel portal. This addition gives even more visibility to Google Hotel Ads, making it an important part of any hotel’s digital marketing strategy. More.
Discovery ads are a newly announced native ad type that will appear in the Google discovery feed, as well as on YouTube and the Promotions & Social tabs in Gmail. This means they have the potential to appear before 100s of millions of users worldwide, presenting an opportunity to target users at the very early stages of the booking process. More.
Having previously tested and removed various image ad formats on search, such as image ad extensions, Google have now released Gallery ads, which allow scrolling through a series of images in a carousel format. Currently available only on mobile, the ads will appear for the top result and should improve click through rates. Google say that they have seen improvements of up to 25% in CTR, so this will give a competitive advantage to hotels who will now be able to direct more users to their official website.
Bumper machine is a tool that will automatically create 6-second “bumper ads” from longer form Youtube videos. The machine looks for “key elements” such as a clear focus on a product or a voiceover, with a final call to action at the end of the ad. This means that your video content can go much further. Having content to publish regularly can be a challenge for hotels, but by automatically creating shorter videos, hoteliers can expand and reframe their available video content.
Note that some of these new options are not yet available in Europe, but will be rolled out over the coming months.
