Intro to Using Audiences in Your Google Hotel Ads Campaigns

Intro to using audiences in your Google hotel ads campaigns

Google hotel ads is the largest channel for hotel metasearch in terms of volume of impressions, clicks and bookings. While Google hotel ads campaigns don’t offer all of the same targeting options as standard Google paid search campaigns, such as keywords, it does offer the ability to include specific types of audience targeting. Even then, the audience types available for use are more limited. Google Hotel Ads only offers the ability to use 1st party, customer match and similar to audience types. Here’s an intro to the audience types available to use in Google Hotel Ads campaigns and some ways to use them to enhance your performance.

Google hotel ads campaigns audience types

Even though Google doesn’t allow the ability to add it’s platform specific affinity and in-market audiences, there are still some great targeting options available for Google hotel ads campaigns. They center around 1st party audience sources. All the more reason (along with depreciation of 3rd party cookies) to focus on building out your hotel’s 1st party databases. 

1. Website Retargeting Audiences
   Website retargeting audiences are comprised of users that have visited your website and this list can be full of all visitors or sliced and diced a variety of ways based on information available in Analytics. We recommend linking Google Analytics 4 for even more robust options.
2. Customer Match Audiences
   Customer match is Google’s name for audience lists comprised of your hotel’s 1st party database. This could include a list of your past guests, loyalty/rewards club member lists and more. 
3. Similar To Audiences
   Similar to audiences are Google’s version of “look-a-like” audiences. These audiences are automatically generated by Google from every 1st party audience you create in your Google Ads account. Google uses your seed 1st party list (think retargeting list or customer match list)  and then creates a list of people who have similar search behavior to the users on your original 1st party audience list. 

How to use audience lists in Google hotel ads

Done adding and creating all of your different audience types in your Google Hotel Ads account? Now you’re ready to use them in your campaigns. Here’s a few ways you can get started.

1. Add all audiences to your campaigns as observation only first
   We always recommend observing the audiences first to gather data and understand how they perform before deciding to solely target them in campaigns
2. Customize messaging for different audience types
   Create separate Google Hotel ads campaigns targeting different audience types. This allows you to customize your messaging in your Google Hotel Ads callouts to the audience your are targeting in the campaign. For example, you may want to callout unique messages to your past guests vs new guests. 
3. Customize your bidding and budgets by audience type
   Based on audience performance, it may make sense to create separate Google Hotel ads campaigns targeting different audiences in order to bid higher or lower and control your budgets based on performance. By bidding higher for a specific audience segment, this allows you to give more visibility through higher position in the order of ads. The higher your ad on the order, the more expensive the cost per click or acquisition, but if this audience converts well then the result is more revenue to your bottom line. 

These are just a few ways to start using your audiences within your Google Hotel Ads campaigns. Options can be more or less robust depending on your audience list sizes and available impressions. Remember - Google needs a match of at least 1,000 users on a list before you can use it for targeting in campaigns.

Looking to learn more about how you can use your hotel’s audiences within your Google Hotel Ads campaigns? Reach out to our hotel metasearch experts today.