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EXPEDIA VS. PRICELINE -- WHOSE MEDIA PLAN TO BOOK? Optimedia's Antony Young Analyzes the Media Strategies Behind Rival Travel Sites By Antony Young

Published: June 30, 2010

As schools break for summer, some families -- like mine -- are still planning their vacations. So I

took a look at two prominent travel sites, Expedia and Priceline, to see which one's media strategy

is likely to attract more trip planners.

Their media plans are especially important as the travel industry picks up after a tough 2009.

Demand for flights and hotels are rebounding and so, too, are airfares and room rates. With

slimmer margins on airline tickets, hotels have very much become the major battleground for

Expedia and Priceline and this is reflected in the focus of their advertising. Online Travel Agencies

(OTA's) accounted for 34.7% of all U.S. hotel bookings in the first quarter of 2010, up from 27.8% in

2009, Priceline CMO Brett Keller said in a recent speech.

Creative executions

Expedia launched a new branding campaign for 2010. Its tagline, "Where you book matters,"

accompanied a new logo incorporated into its creative messaging. The campaign, which targets

frequent leisure travelers, launched Dec. 26 with commercials featuring a visual metaphor of

building blocks as a way to demonstrate how consumers interact with Expedia. The first spot starts

with upbeat soft-rock music narrated by an unseen woman dictating her specifications for the

perfect "girls' weekend." She talks about having multiple hotel options and the ability to compare

dates for the best savings. Expedia's signature "dot coooom" jingle ends the spot. A spot with a

man's voice and trip goals was launched in February.

Priceline has built its position in the market on the opportunity for customers to name their own

price, brought to life through some hilarious spots fronted by pitchman William Shatner. This year,

Shatner introduced his new sidekick "Big Deal," a 520 lb 6'5" character who helps persuade hotels

to take a deal. In February, the Big Deal ads were joined by new creative that featured the

Negotiator's "Evil Twin" (played, of course, by Shatner). Priceline takes a karate chop at

Expedia.com (and Hotels.com), claiming that Priceline can get prices 50% lower.

The strategies of the two companies differed noticeably. Expedia.com attracted 16.7 million unique

visitors in May, 59% more than the 10.5 million who visited Priceline.com, according to ComScore.

And Expedia media seems to reflect this, promoting the site as the generic travel brand for a broad

audience and highlighting its full range of services and travel destinations. Priceline is more single-

mindedly focused on price, and its media appears to target lower down the purchase funnel with an

emphasis on converting transactions.

RATINGS

Outstanding

Highly effective

Good

Disappointing

A disaster

Television strategy

Expedia.com

Priceline.com

Outside of online, TV is the primary medium supporting both advertisers' efforts. From January

through April, Expedia placed $16.1M vs. Priceline's $13.7M, according to Kantar Media. But their

approach to TV placement was very different.

Expedia's TV mix is 52% cable, 23% network and 20% syndication. Its cable buy is heaviest on The

Golf Channel, The History Channel, SyFy and FX. Its network schedule includes a heavy mix of talk

shows and new programs with regular placements in morning TV -- "The Today Show," "Good

Morning America" and "The Early Show," plus late night programming on "The Late Show with

David Letterman," "Jimmy Kimmel Live" and "The Tonight Show."

In contrast, Priceline placed 80% of its TV buy in cable, outspending its larger rival on many of the

high-profile cable stations. Sports programming featured heavily on Priceline's schedule, including

spots in FOX's NFC playoffs in the last quarter of 2009, ESPN's "SportsCenter" and some Winter

Olympics buys on NBC -- showing a more male skew compared with Expedia's buys. Priceline opted

out, however, of this year's Super Bowl. Comedy was also a strong theme in its TV plan, which gels

well with the style of creative messaging. Interestingly, Priceline year-to-date has avoided the

Travel Channel.

Expedia ran a nice collection of relevant branded integrations as part of its TV buy. Some examples

include: On the Great American Country (GAC) channel it ran two vignettes encouraging viewers to

go online to book their next vacation in order to do "side-to-side" comparisons to get the best deal.

I really liked their Travel Tips vignettes that screened on National Geographic in March, April and

May. The jointly sponsored spots from Expedia and National Geographic offered helpful travel tips

that tie back to Expedia's key promotional messages such as booking online because of speed and

efficiency, mixing and matching airlines to get the best deals and using sites that send alerts for the

best fares. Another spot suggests tips for booking "green hotels."

Expedia also sponsored two branded entertainment skits on ABC's

"Jimmy Kimmel Live." One example featured Jimmy and his studio

security guard Guillermo discussing how Jimmy should book his summer

vacation. The skit included the usual send-ups about Guillermo's

exaggerated accent, as Jimmy asked Guillermo to say "Free Night and

Fee-Free Flights" fast 5 times.

Online display media

Expedia.com

Priceline.com

Both Expedia and Priceline ran online display advertising promoting

multiple offers and product messages. The various banners were booked

on a combination of major portals such as MSN.com and Yahoo, travel-

idea sites such as AreaGuides.ne, and specific destination sites for cities

such as Boston, Las Vegas, New Orleans, Orlando and Los Angeles. Ad

network buys driving traffic to their sites featured widely in their plans.

Expedia created a cool series of travel-related content sites such as 100OrlandoSpots.com,

Cruises.net, Vacations.net and BigWorldTrips.com. These standalone sites offered detailed travel

information and ideas on different travel experiences and opportunities to recruit new customers --

and of course drove visitors to Expedia.

In May, Expedia launched a summer sale promotion via a Facebook poll. The cities that featured

highest on this list were promoted with hotel discounts of up to 40%. Expedia's YouTube

channel shows some of the company's latest ads and brief travel-tip videos starring Expedia staff.

The page currently features a demo video for Expedia's iPhone App "TripAssist 2.0."

Expedia's Twitter page features tweets about the latest deals from the site and customer services

reps answering questions.

The Priceline Facebook and Twitter pages for Shatner's

"Priceline Negotiator" character feature both the most

recent travel deals and promotions from the company.

Its YouTube channel features several of the newest

Priceline TV spots starring Shatner and his Big Deal

sidekick.

Search

Expedia.com

Priceline.com

From January through March, Expedia spent significantly more than Priceline on paid search across

the three main search engines. But Priceline outspent Expedia in April and May. Both brands

primarily focused on branded search words, e.g. "Priceline Hotels," but Expedia.com has a

significantly stronger presence in paid search on top non-branded travel terms.

Mobile

Expedia.com

Priceline.com

Expedia's Trip Assist mobile app allows users to track all the details of their itineraries, wherever

or whenever they booked their trips. The app provides text and e-mail updates free of charge.

There's also an option to book via a stripped-down interface. Approximately 55,000 trips were

booked through this app last year, according to Expedia.

Priceline's Negotiator iPhone app launched in

November 2009. Unlike its competitor, Priceline's app

provides the functionality of its website, allowing users

to view hotel rates and last-minute deals. The app also

features an impressive "radar" function that wouldn't

look out of place on an episode of "Star Trek." Using the

electronic compass built into the iPhone 3Gs, travelers

can hold up their phones in a desired direction and the

radar will display specific hotels' availabilities, ratings

and accepted price bids in that immediate vicinity. Users can then book the hotels through their

iPhones or by calling Priceline's booking specialists. The app also provides some comic relief with

The Priceline Negotiator punching his way through the screen as it vibrates.

Sponsorship and partnerships

Expedia.com

Priceline.com

Expedia has partnered with the International Gay and Lesbian Travel Association to create a

microsite devoted to GLBT travel events, festivals and hotspots. While Orbitz.com was the early

mover in targeting the GLBT community, this has helped Expedia position itself more firmly before

this market.

Expedia also created a site for the National Parks

Foundation that promotes travel to U.S. National Parks.

The site offers travel information, itinerary suggestions,

downloadable maps and in-depth articles on "Can't Miss

National Parks." Expedia also used the site to promote

Ken Burns' PBS documentary, "The National Parks:

America's Best Idea," by running video clips prior to its

premiere last fall.

Priceline, on the other hand, became the "Official Travel

Partner" of Ticketmaster.com. Tickemaster.com buyers

are offered access to Priceline.com's collection of travel services, including customized hotel, airline

and rental-car offers, to complement their event purchases.

Priceline also sponsored "Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of

Cartoon Comedy" web series, shown on YouTube and other web

outlets, and sponsored its corresponding channel on Hulu as

well. The "Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy"YouTube

channel features animated ads for Priceline using the

"Negotiator" character along with several comedy web cartoons

from MacFarlane, the creator of "Family Guy" and "American Dad."

Summary

Expedia.com

Priceline.com

I love Priceline's TV ads. They have a personality and tongue-in-cheek humor that makes this brand

stand out wonderfully. William Shatner's Priceline Negotiator character was integrated consistently

across TV, online, print and the Priceline.com assets. The media plan is very robust and I like how

the TV plan had a clear point of view about who it wanted to connect with and how to do it.

Expedia, however, seemed to bring a little more creativity at each stage of the plan. Its online

content strategy, developing multiple travel-related sites, provides additional access points for the

brand to deliver traffic to its main site. Yes Expedia outspent Priceline, but Expedia also seemed to

do a more complete job of leveraging the media.

Expedia's brand media strategy to target higher in the purchase funnel also seems to be paying off

as the market begins to pick up. According to Google Insights, search interest in Expedia has shown

a healthy increase year to-date vs. the rest of the travel sector. This appears to be reflected in the

travel bookings on the sites. In recent financial reports, Expedia's first quarter U.S. domestic

bookings are up 20% over the same quarter in 2009, ahead of Priceline, up 16%.

Research and data compiled by Nora Scullin at Optimedia.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Antony Young is CEO of Optimedia US -- a Publicis Groupe-

owned media-planning and -buying agency headquartered in

New York. He is a regular contributor on brand media strategy

for Advertising Age. Follow him on Twitter @antonyyoung.

http://adage.com/article/mediaworks/expedia-priceline-media-plan-book/144743/