Brand of the Week: Expedia, Inc.

Planning a holiday getaway coming up? Digital ad spend for Expedia, Inc. has been gradually increasing throughout the month of September as the advertiser introduced over one hundred new creatives to promote sub-brands such as Hotwire and VRBO.

The reservation engine company also counts Hotels.com, Trivago, Orbitz, Travelocity, CarRentals.com, HomeAway, and its namesake Expedia, amongst others, in it’s portfolio. Trying to cover every aspect of your vacation online, Expedia, Inc. faces tough competition in a crowded market against heavy hitters like Priceline and TripAdvisor. Here's a look at how the brand is competing online across desktop, mobile, and video.

Hotels.com, Hotwire and Trivago Rank As Top Sub-Brands

Nearly 90% of Expedia, Inc.’s digital advertising budget across the last thirty days has been directed to Hotels.com, Hotwire, and Trivago. Those sub-brands are also seeing the most digital impressions under the Expedia, Inc. umbrella.

 Of that, Trivago has received the majority of the company’s attention recently, accounting for 38% of Expedia, Inc.’s total digital ad spend. The Trivago brand favors video creatives, consuming half of their budget, targeting top sites such as ABC News, Xfinity, and CBS through direct buys.

For Hotwire, their ad spend differed from Trivago’s strategy, opting for display ad buys rather than video. Between direct buys and usage of ad network Criteo, the brand targeted TripAdvisor, Yahoo!, and Diply as top sites over the last thirty days.

Hotels.com Business Up for Review

Hotels.com recently announced a full North American media review of its media planning and buying business. The sub-brand, similar to Trivago, delegates out over half of their digital ad spend on video advertising. Over the last thirty days, Hotels.com has utilized MediaMath, Quantcast, and OpenX in their ad mix, in addition to direct buys.

The entity’s top digital creative by spend and impressions recently is a video ad launched on September 7th to target football loving fans on ESPN.

Expedia vs. Priceline

Looking at the Travel Category, Expedia, Inc. competes against The Priceline Group on a daily basis. Entities such as Booking.com, Agoda, Kayak, Priceline, Swoodoo, and RentalCars.com, all sit underneath The Priceline Group’s umbrella. Basically, most every reservation engine you visit for travel booking falls under either of the two companies.

Drilling down to their site strategy, The Priceline Group is running ads on a couple of Expedia, Inc. sites like Expedia.com and Travelocity.com; but, overall, Expedia, Inc. is beating out their competitor by spend and impressions on sites that they are going head-to-head on.