Property promotion is an ad format for hotel campaigns that allows advertisers to increase consideration of their property by promoting it into a prominent position in hotel search results. Property promotion ads aim to drive incremental outbound clicks, while retaining expected conversion rates and booking value.
Benefits
Where your ads appear
Property promotion ads can appear in multiple places across Google.
Google search results
Appears on mobile only
When you search for hotels in a given geographic area (for example, “hotels nyc”) on Google Search, a carousel may be shown at the top of the search results page with sponsored hotel options.
Hotel search results
Appears on desktop and mobile
When you search hotels on Google Hotel Search (for example, “hotels nyc”), property promotion ads can appear in the list of search results or in the “Overview” tab of a hotel listing. When you interact with the ad, you’re taken to the "Sponsored" tab. The "Sponsored" tab is exclusive to that property promotion ad, and is designed to showcase the property and the advertiser’s offer.
List view
Up to 2 property promotion ads can appear in the list (either at the top or the bottom) of search results for Hotel Search.
Desktop
Mobile
Overview tab
Google Maps
Appears on desktop and mobile (Android only)
Up to 2 property promotions ads can appear at the top of Google Maps search results when you search for hotels.
Desktop
Mobile (Android only)
Getting started
Property promotion ads are open to all advertisers globally. To create property promotion ads, you should:
- Have an active Hotel Center account linked to at least one Google Ads account
- Have at least one active landing page in Hotel Center
- Have at least one image of the property that is ad-approved or provided by the advertiser
Consider promoting properties which are:
- Experiencing periods of low occupancy
- New to a market and need to raise brand awareness
- Recently renovated or have expanded their services (for example, added a spa, outdoor recreation area, or partnerships with nearby activities)
- More relevant or desirable than usual due to a big event in the area
- Currently having a flash sale or that you're willing to offer a discount for a limited time
Setting up property promotion ads
You can create and modify property promotion ad groups in your Google Ads account and through the Google Ads API.
To create a property promotion ad, follow the steps below.
- Sign in to the Google Ads account that is linked to your Hotel Center account.
- Choose a hotel campaign where you want to create a property promotion ad.
- Select Set up a new ad group and then select Property promotion as the ad group type.
- Select properties you want to promote and add them to the property promotion ad group.
- Set property promotion bids.
- Activate your campaign and property promotion ad group.
Bidding for property promotion ads
Property promotion ads let you increase consideration of your property by promoting it at the top of search results. You can choose which properties to promote and set a bid that aligns with your business objectives.
Property promotion ads are compatible with all bid strategies available for hotel campaigns, including:
- Manual CPC (cost-per-click)
- CPC%
- Enhanced CPC (ECPC)
- Commission (per conversion)
- Commission (per stay)
Learn more about the bidding options available for hotel campaigns
Reporting
You can view performance metrics for property promotion ads by using the Report Editor and segmenting by the ad group type “property promotion ads”.
Eligible impressions
An eligible impression is awarded for every active bid in the property promotion query geography (at the hotel city level) and is capped at the number of available ad positions for the Google Ads account.
Available ad positions depend on the placement:
- For Hotel Search and Google Maps, the number of available ad positions varies.
- For the Google Search carousel, there are up to 20 ad positions.
Eligible impressions per geographic region might also have overlap. For example, if you have eligible impressions in Dallas, eligible impressions in Fort Worth, and eligible impressions in the Greater Dallas Area, then the Greater Dallas Area might contain eligible impressions from both Dallas and Fort Worth.
Impressions
Hotel Search and Google Maps
A property promotion ad receives impressions when it shows in the list view on Hotel Search or Google Maps. For Hotel Search, impressions are never logged in the "Sponsored" tab.
Google Search carousel
A property promotion ad receives impressions when it's shown in the carousel (even if a user doesn't scroll to view the list).
If a user interacts with a format to reveal more ads (like more cards in a carousel), all additional ads are applied to the overall impression count (even if the user exposes a subset of those cards).
Impression Share
Impression Share is defined as the percentage of all eligible impressions for a given user query.
Clicks
A click occurs when a user selects an outbound link to the partner website. There's no reporting specific to the property promotion ads carousel, Flights, and others. These stats are included in aggregated metrics.
How can I see if I’m using Booking Link bids for Property Promotion Ads?
We log all property promotions ads traffic under the network type “Cross-network” so you can always segment performance traffic by property promotion ads placement, regardless of what ad group type the bid comes from. All booking link traffic is logged under the network type “Search”. If you don't have property promotion ad groups set up for a hotel, it's possible that bids from booking link ad groups may be used for property promotion ads. Use the network type dimension to tell the 2 traffic sources apart - “Search” for booking module traffic, “Cross-network” for property promotion ads traffic.
Starting in 2023, all property promotion ads traffic will show up under “Search” and no longer use “Cross-network”.