Targeting Travelers with Display Campaigns

1. From Search to Display: A New Advertising Playground

So far, we've operated exclusively on the Google Search Network, where your text ads appear when someone actively searches for keywords you've chosen.

Now, we'll explore the Google Display Network (GDN). This is a massive collection of over three million websites, apps, and videos (including YouTube and Gmail) where you can show visual ads. Instead of targeting keywords, you target people based on their characteristics, interests, and recent online behaviors.

For your hotel, the GDN allows you to build brand awareness and plant the seed of an idea for a future stay. You might show a beautiful image of your hotel's pool to someone who reads travel blogs or an ad about your weekend getaway package to someone who has been researching flights to your city.

2. Targeting the Right Travelers: Affinity vs. In-Market Audiences

The key to a successful Display campaign is reaching the right audience. Google provides powerful tools to do this, and for prospecting (finding new customers), two of the most important are Affinity and In-Market audiences.

• Affinity Audiences: These group people based on their long-term interests, passions, and lifestyle. It's about "who they are." Think of these as broad, TV-style audience segments. For your hotel, relevant affinity audiences might be Luxury Travelers, Foodies, or Family Vacationers. This is great for broad brand awareness.

• In-Market Audiences: These are people Google has identified as being actively in the market to buy a certain product or service. It's about "what they are actively researching." This is much more focused and closer to the point of purchase. For a hotelier, this is incredibly valuable. You can target people who are In-market for Travel > Hotels & Accommodations or even In-market for Flights to [Your City].

Understanding the distinction is crucial:

• Affinity: "I want to reach people who like luxury travel." (Building long-term awareness)
• In-Market: "I want to reach people who are currently planning a trip." (Driving consideration and bookings)

3. Step-by-Step: Setting Up a Display Campaign for Your Hotel

Now for the practical part. We'll walk through the process of creating a new Display campaign from scratch. A crucial best practice is to separate your different targeting methods into their own ad groups. This means you'll have one ad group for your Affinity audiences and a separate one for your In-Market audiences. This allows you to monitor performance and tailor your ad creative for each group.

We will use a detailed video walkthrough to guide us through the Google Ads interface.

Step 1: Campaign Creation and Settings

First, you'll create the campaign, choose your objective, and set the foundational rules like budget, location, and bidding.

Step 2: Creating Ad Groups for In-Market & Affinity Audiences

Once the campaign shell is created, you'll be prompted to create your first ad group. This is where you'll define your audience targeting.

Following our best practice, you'll create one ad group targeting "In-Market" audiences and a second one targeting "Affinity" audiences.

Now, let's see how to find and add these specific audiences in the interface.

Step 3: Creating Your Responsive Display Ads

The final step in the setup is creating the ads themselves. On the Display Network, you'll primarily use Responsive Display Ads. You provide the ingredients—images, logos, headlines, and descriptions—and Google automatically mixes and matches them to create ads that fit different placements across the network.

For your hotel, make sure to use:

• Images: High-quality photos of your rooms, lobby, pool, restaurant, and unique features.
• Logo: A clear version of your hotel's logo.
• Headlines: Short, punchy text like "Luxury Stays in [Your City]" or "Your Perfect Urban Oasis."
• Descriptions: Longer text to elaborate on amenities, special offers, or what makes your hotel unique.

Conclusion

Congratulations! You've just learned how to expand your advertising from capturing existing intent on the Search Network to generating new demand on the Display Network. This is a fundamental skill for building a full-funnel marketing strategy.

Key Takeaways:

• The Google Display Network (GDN) allows you to show visual ads on millions of websites and apps to build brand awareness.
• Affinity audiences target people based on their long-term interests and are great for broad, top-of-funnel marketing.
• In-Market audiences target people actively researching products or services, allowing you to reach potential guests who are closer to making a booking decision.
• The best practice is to separate your targeting types into different ad groups for better control, measurement, and message tailoring.
• Responsive Display Ads are the standard, requiring you to provide a variety of creative assets (images, logos, text) for Google to optimize.

What's Next?

Today we focused on prospecting—reaching people who don't know you yet. But what about all the people who have already visited your website but didn't book a room? The Display Network is the perfect tool for bringing them back.

In our next lesson, you'll learn how to create a remarketing Display campaign to target website visitors who did not book, a highly effective strategy for increasing your conversion rate.