Flywheel News | October 2022 Hotel Digital Marketing News | GCommerce

1. Google Analytics 4 Adds New Reporting Features  

Google continues to roll out new features to GA4. The most recent announcements include Behavioral Modeling in Real-time GA reporting, new home page originally previewed at Google Marketing Live, custom channel reporting (one of our favorite new features), campaign manager 360 integration that will allow us to optimize our campaign bidding towards GA4 conversions and more. Read the full list here.

2. Are You Overpaying For Metasearch?

Soaring media costs mean metasearch advertising budgets aren’t going nearly as far as they were a year ago. Which is one huge reason hoteliers are choosing Metadesk. Our pay-per-stay pricing model means you only pay for stays that take place. And our variable rate commission structure means you’ll never overpay. Learn more here.

3. New Google Business Profile Search Menu Rolling Out 

A new way to edit your Google Business Profile is currently rolling out in the SERP. business owners can now easily search and make edits to their business listings from the search results page. Learn more here.

4. Why You Should Be Using Google Business Posts

Are you familiar with Google Business Posts? If you’re using GCommerce for local SEO services, this is a tactic we include. But what are they and can they help your hotel’s visibility in the search results? Read here to find out.

5. Hotel Metasearch Marketing Optimization Techniques Webinar

Did you miss the recent hotel metasearch webinar by GCommerce on tactics to optimize your hotel metasearch campaigns? Don’t worry; watch the replay here.

6. Meta Shares New Insights To Improve Ad Performance 

 It’s not news that recent privacy laws and changes have changed things on Meta advertising platforms. In response to advertiser frustration, Meta just launched its new Performance 5 framework to guide on how to improve advertising performance on the platform. As with any recommendations straight from the platform, we recommend testing them to ensure they actually lead to improved performance for your KPIs.  Learn more here.

Flywheel News | September 2022 Hotel Digital Marketing News | GCommerce

1. New Price Accuracy Policy for Google Hotel Ads Goes Into Effect on October 10th 

Price Accuracy is a major element in optimizing your Google Hotel Ads’ performance. Google’s new privacy accuracy policy goes into effect on October 10th. Read the new policy here and make sure your hotel ads and booking engine landing page is in compliance or else you could run into major performance issues, including your campaigns being shut off by Google.

2. Google Ads Renames Google Ad Extensions to Assets

Google has officially re-named ad extensions to assets. Part of the reason comes from the fact that ad extensions are part of the assets, along with headlines and descriptions, that make up the entirety of an ad. What we’re excited about is to have reporting for these “assets” alongside headlines and descriptions for an easier to evaluate, more holistic view of the ad’s asset performance. Read more here.

3. Google Announces Innovations During Search On 2022 

Every year at it’s Search On event, Google announces the latest innovations coming to it’s search product. At this year’s event Google touched on updates including making search more intuitive with multisearch  with images and text, business messaging via search ads and more. Discover more here.

4. GCommerce Hosts Metasearch Marketing Optimization Tips Webinar

Metasearch is one of your best tools for increasing direct traffic and recapturing market share from OTA’s, but only if you’re optimizing your metasearch advertising campaigns. Watch the replay here.

5. LinkedIn Adds New Features for Company Pages 

LinkedIn launched a few new features for Company pages in September 2022 including making post template type available for all company pages as well as link stickers to drive more direct response to company page updates. Learn the latest here.

6. TikTok Expands Description field to capitalize on it’s platform’s role in Discovery

Back in July a Google exec suggested TikTok was eating into Google’s core products of Search and Maps. Captiailzing on it’s emerging role in consumers’ discovery process, TikTok has expanded it’s description field from 300 characters to 2,200 characters to assist with search. If you’re active on TikTok make sure you’re taking advantage of this expanding character count and approaching it from a search optimized perspective.

7. Have You Started Your Holiday Campaign Planning?

It’s that time of year! Cyber Weekend and the holidays will be here before you know it. Make sure you are prepping any promotion and package details now to get over to your digital marketing teams for prep and creation.

Flywheel News | August 2022 Hotel Digital Marketing News | GCommerce

1. Cookie-less World News: Google Ads introduces modeled conversions

At the beginning of August, Google announced that in order to provide advertisers with the most accurate performance data, they are launching an update to improve conversion reporting for a subset of traffic. Enter modeled online conversions for Google Ads. Already used in SA360 (Google Marketing Platform’s advanced search engine marketing platform used by GCommerce), modeled conversions will now be used in Google Ads to “make up for data lost due to protecting user privacy or technical limitations”. Read more here.

2. Google Announces New Search Algorithm Update - Is Your Website Ready?

Google’s most recent algorithm update puts a focus on “more content by people, for people” in an effort to provide it’s search engine users with more relevant, meaningful content for their search queries. What does this mean for your hotel? It means that rich, meaningful content should continue to be a focus for your web pages. You should continue to focus on optimizing for people and not just search engine bots. Learn more here.

3. Microsoft Ads Extends RSA Deadline (again)

Need more time to migrate your ETAs to RSAs in Microsoft Ads? Then you’re in luck. Microsoft Ads is extending the deadline to February. If you’re a GCommerce client, you’re already prepared for this migration. Read the full announcement here.

4. Digital out-of-home Ads Now Available on DV360

Ever feel like the lines between digital and offline marketing continue to blurr? Well, this past month Google Marketing Platform announced that digital out-of-home ads (think digital billboards at stadiums, in taxis, next to bus stops) inventory will now be available via DV360. Discover more about this product announcement here.

5. GCommerce Offers Free eBook on GA

Whether you’ve launched GA4 or are still holding off, the future without Google Universal Analytics is imminent. Learn everything you need to know about GA4 from what it is and why it’s important for your business in our new GA4 eBook.

6. Discover Data-Driven Facebook Ad Optimization Tips

Facebook has continued to prove itself as a valuable marketing channel for hotels. Is your hotel benefiting from the most value on this channel? Learn best practices from the Facebook marketing experts at GCommerce in this new eBook.

7. Learn What Punk Culture Can Teach Us About Marketing

Can you identify the overlapping themes and similarities between punk culture and marketing? Check out this interesting and thoughtful piece by GCommerce Search Marketing Specialist, Alex Scharpf.

8. Google Ads Updates Destination Requirements - Are your campaigns at risk?

When visitors land on your site via a Google Ad, they should be presented with a good experience. In order to have more control over the experience Google users are presented with when they click on a Google Ad, the platform is updating its destination requirements. Read more and understand if you should make any on-site changes to avoid your ads being out of compliance. 

Flywheel News | July 2022 Hotel Digital Marketing News | GCommerce

1. GA4 Ads Bounce Rate! (and other features)

July 23rd marked the 1 year countdown for the sunsetting of Google Universal Analytics. That means if you haven’t set up GA4 to track your hotel’s website data, there’s a very real possibility you won’t have a full year of data once Google makes the full switch to GA4. There has been a lot of feedback regarding GA4 and I think a lot of marketers will be happy to hear that Google has now added bounce rate to GA4 (although it is a slightly different definition then UA bounce rate, so study up!). Learn more about bounce rate in GA4 and more here.

2. Google Announces It Is Delaying the Demise of 3rd Party Cookies
Google has officially delayed the demise of 3rd party cookies from July 2023 to until late 2024, stating it needs to provider marketers more time to test new Privacy Sandbox tools. What’s your reaction? Shocked or were you expecting this to happen? Our thoughts - not totally shocked is the main reaction coming out of the GCommerce camp.  Learn more here.

3. ICYMI: Introducing Metadesk

Have you heard about Metadesk yet? It is our new metasearch platform built for performance. From variable pricing to integrated custom audiences, metasearch has never been easier. Learn more at metadesk.pro

4. LinkedIn Launches Native Carousel Posts 

Have you been using the “ol’ sneaky” way of creating carousel style posts on LinkedIn? Good news! LinkedIn will be rolling carousel posts out to all users later this fall. Learn more and how to use the new post type here.

5. Facebook Announces Change to App Home Feed

Noticing anything different in your Facebook app? Facebook announced two feeds will now be found in it’s apps, mimicking app navigation and layout popular in TikTok. Over the past year it’s made other changes to keep up with the popularity of TikTok. Make sure your marketing isn’t falling behind. It’s time to jump in and start creating short-form video content to feed the algorithms and stay visible.  Learn more here.

6. Netflix Announces Partnership with Microsoft For Ad Inventory

Netflix has officially announced that Microsoft will be it’s ad partner for it’s new lower priced ad-supported subscription plan. This is a BIG win for Microsoft after it’s recent acquisition of Xandr media, which was announced this past December. Want access to this CTV inventory? It will be exclusively available via the Microsoft platform. Haven’t considered CTV/OTT ads as part of your strategy? Learn more here.

Flywheel News | June 2022 Hotel Digital Marketing News | GCommerce

1. GCommerce Announces Metadesk, It’s New Hotel Metasearch Solution

GCommerce announced the launch of it’s new hotel metasearch solution, Metadesk, during HITEC’s 50th Anniversary in Orlando, FL the last week of June. The new platform offers on-demand data insights, easy-to-understand pricing and direct access to your campaign optimization specialists. Learn more at metadesk.pro

2. Google Ads & Microsoft Ads Officially Discontinue Support for ETAs

As of June 30th, 2022 advertisers are no longer able to create or edit expanded text ads (ETAs) on Google or Microsoft Ads. Since you’re still able to let them run, we recommend keeping an ETAs in your account if they are top performers. We also recommend taking those top performing ETAs and creating responsive search ad (RSA) versions. Responsive search ads are the new standard ad format and allow up to 15 headlines and 4 descriptions. Google then takes those headlines and descriptions and creates multiple ads using different combinations of those assets. It’s multivariate ad testing to the max.

3. New Google Ads Travel Features

In June, Google announced a few new travel specific features. The first is the ability for hotels to add/manage rates directly into their Google Business Profile. While this might sound appealing, we recommend only approaching rates and inventory via a direct connection to your hotel’s CRS via a connectivity partner since rates/inventory update constantly. Next is Feedless Onboarding that would allow advertisers to great hotel campaigns without needing a Hotel Center account. More to come as this is currently in beta. Finally, they announced adding travel specific goals to the new performance max campaign type.

4. GCommerce Attends HITEC’s 50th Anniversary, HSMAI and ROC in Orlando, FL

GCommerce was excited to attend the 50th anniversary of HITEC as well as HSMAI Marketing Strategy Conference and ROC in Orlando, FL during the last week of June. The week included catching up with some of our incredible clients and partners as well as the announcement of our new hotel metasearch advertising solution, Metadesk.

5. Microsoft Advertising Now Requiring Advertiser Identity Verification

Following suit with Google, Microsoft Ads is now requiring advertisers to verify identity to ensure it’s users are seeing ads from trusted sources. Learn more here and be prepared to supply your agency or advertising partner with necessary documentation.