This has led to brands building a presence within Facebook so they can benefit from these lower costs. The new research, released today, is based on 326bn impressions for 266 clients across 205 countries.

The study also found that CPCs in the US increased by 55.7% between Thanksgiving and December 17. However, CPC price for Facebook ads dropped by 11% in the UK between the third and fourth quarters of 2011. The drop follows two quarters of rising CPC prices in the UK, and contrasts a 1% rise across the UK, US, German, French and Canadian markets

Average cost per thousand rates were flat in the UK in the same period, compared to an increase of 8% across the five markets. The report also found that CTR increased by 18% from Q1 to Q4 in 2011, which TBG says suggests that advertisers are building better ad creatives and taking advantage of Facebook’s targeting options. CTR differs greatly between sectors though, as the graph below demonstrates.

Read More at Econsultancy

Here are 5 strategies to stay ahead in online travel marketing;

1. Testing: A comScore executive estimated earlier this year that 75 percent of its clients are testing their digital creative in parts of their campaigns. That’s a good number. Testing must be done for creative but it must also be done for audience relevance, segmentation and timing. Testing is relatively inexpensive, effective and essential.

2. Find growth areas: Once a travel company integrates a testing mentality they can be more aggressive and innovative about finding growth areas. Is it a destination? A new target audience? An underestimated holiday? Find something that can produce incremental growth.

3. Customize messaging: Even with the uptick in travel ads online, too many companies still rely on a few executions. If you want to be innovative, create a dozen of them based on microsegments. Take it to the next level and partner with cutting edge ad platforms that offer dynamic creative executions. Dynamic creative capability essentially creates custom ads for individual customers in real-time. For the travel category it can take a generic message such as “low fares” into specific fares for specific destinations based on individual customer preferences and behaviors.

4. Audit customers: Are the affluent customers still affluent? Have the older customers in the database travelled recently? Are business travelers using their loyalty program points? A rigorous customer audit will answer these questions and enable travel companies to execute against them.

Read More at HotelMarketing.com

Starting today, ads that have previously shown to the side of the results may in some cases appear below them. They dynamically optimize each search page, including its ads, to provide the best experience for our users.

We’ve been seeing tests for months, and this week Google officially announced it would begin serving AdWords at the bottom of search engine results pages on Google.com. Interestingly, the company says that, in tests, the ads at the bottom performed better than those on the side of the page.

Google says ads at the bottom fit “better into the user’s flow as they scan the page from top to bottom.”

Google will lump bottom-of-the-page AdWords in with side-of-the-page ads where Top versus Side reporting is concerned. Instead of Top vs Side, the report will soon be called “Top vs. Other.”

Read More at Search Engine Land

The AdWords program has always been designed around “keywords, keywords, keywords,” said product management director Baris Gultekin. And that isn’t changing, exactly, but Google is announcing an alternative, which it calls Dynamic Search Ads. Traditionally, an advertiser will create a campaign by bidding to run ads alongside specific keyword searches. With the new product, advertisers just point AdWords toward the pages that they want to promote. Then Google matches the ad with the best searches and generates an appropriate headline.

Even though Google is only announcing the program today, it has actually been in the works for the past two-and-a-half years. That's because it's a big technical challenge.

"We are basically redesigning AdWords from the ground up," Gultekin said. Under the hood, he said that Google is "flipping the search engine on its head." Instead of taking a keyword and finding relevant pages, the company is taking a page and matching it to the best keyword.

Dynamic Search Ads are in a limited beta test, and Gultekin acknowledged that early advertisers want to make sure that they don't have to abandon their traditional keyword campaigns. (They don't.) Still, those advertisers are already seeing a 5 to 10 percent increase in conversions.

Read More at ADWEEK

Jonathan Beeston, head of global marketing, said: “The opportunity for travel companies in mobile is growing significantly.

“Cost-per-click is around 65% lower on mobile, so it’s still good value for travel advertisers, and if you get the message right, the return is high.

“There’s a particularly strong opportunity for local advertisers such as restaurants, bars or attractions. Google’s research shows one in three mobile searches show local intent.” The analysis found that click-through rates from a mobile phone are, on average, 5.82%, compared to 3.56% from a fixed-line internet connection. Mobile search remains a fraction of fixed-line search, with just 4.2% of total searches, but travel companies are seeing better returns than other sectors. Finance-related searches achieve just 0.08% conversion rate from mobile phones, and 0.31% from fixed-line computers.

Read More at Travolution

Older users are more likely to click through Facebook advertisements, whereas younger ones are more apt to “like” fan pages, the study said.

Users over 50 were 23 percent more likely to click through an ad than all younger age groups, according to the study. Compared with the highly coveted 18 to 29 age group, that percentage rises to 28 percent.

The 50-plus group, which was the oldest group included in the study, was also about 9 percent less likely to “like” a page than any other group.

Gender played a role as well, at least for click-through rates. Women were 11 percent more likely to click through than men were, though both genders “liked” pages at approximately the same rates.

“In general, younger Facebook users are more comfortable using the ‘Like’ button than older users at this point,” Laura O’Shaughnessy, CEO of SocialCode, said in a press release. “With inline fan ads on Facebook, older users have a high level of interaction and curiosity about the ads as evidenced by their high CTRs, whereas younger users have a higher propensity to click the ‘Like’ button right in an ad on Facebook.”

Read More at ClickZ

The approach of marketers has shifted toward tracking all marketing touchpoints and monetising across all online channels at once and not each in a silo. Each channel has a role and the return on investment is measured within channels. Also, travel companies now consider real-time outputs from single to multiple channels and have got the granularity to know which touchpoints are used by different audiences and can design specific campaigns to appeal to different user segments.

Berlin, Germany-based Bernd Neff, VP Brand, Marketing & Communications, Design Hotels agrees and says one needs to consider all touch points as a whole but it’s important to also review each channel individually.

“This should be done by monitoring first through last touch points, re-allocating revenues accordingly, and at the same time keeping track of global RoI,” Neff told EyeforTravel’s Ritesh Gupta in an interview.

Recently, a study recommended that hotel marketers must move away from a singular focus on campaigns and more towards travel shoppers. And they should begin to move from a focus on individual channels to an integrated marketing approach. Repeat exposures across multiple channels reinforce your brand’s message and increase the likelihood of reservations activity

Read More at eyefortravel

The announcement marks Google’s full entrance into the world of behavioral targeting in AdWords.

The system looks at the types of pages that a user visits, considering how recently and frequently the person visits those sites, and associates that browser cookie with the appropriate interest categories. Users can view and edit the categories they’ve been associated at Google’s Ad Preferences page, and opt out entirely, if they so desire.

Read more on Searchengineland

Where: Hilton London Metropole

Time: 9am – 6pm

Conference outline & pricing click here

On 7th February, leading experts in the hotel, restaurant, pubco and travel industry will gather under one roof to identify and debate the latest industry challenges, opportunities and trends in internet marketing and revenue management.

This one-day conference, held in London for the first time ever, will feature top business leaders offering their thoughts on how to drive revenue whilst giving attendees the unique opportunity to take part in hands-on workshops aimed at introducing organisations to breakthrough marketing skills and technologies.

Top speakers such as Nate Bucholz, Industry Manager for Travel at Google and Guillaume Thevenot of TripAdvisor will be addressing such issues as the challenges and opportunities of online customer feedback, global social media trends and how to maximise marketing opportunities through this medium and Google’s revolutionary approach to the hotel and travel industry.

Ingunn Hofseth, President and CEO of HSMAI Europe, commented:
“We are thrilled to be hosting the first ever HSMAI Internet Strategy and revenue management conference in London.  The hospitality and travel industry is forever having to keep ahead of the curve as online marketing has become an essential means of driving revenue.  Therefore, we are very excited to have such distinguished speakers who will be sharing their knowledge and predictions for the future of internet marketing and how hotels, restaurants, pubs and the travel industry can best apply these tools to optimise their business.”

Michael Nowlis, London Business School, commented:
“The hospitality and travel industry has experienced a tumultuous time of late, faced with changing regulations coupled with ever-increasing competiveness as online marketing plays an ever-more prominent role in driving revenues. I am delighted to be participating in what is set to be a truly stimulating day filled with panel debates, expert predictions and hands-on workshops as revenue managers, marketers and other leaders from across the industry gather under one roof to discuss the opportunities, challenges and outlook for such a vital sector to the UK and European economy.”
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RSVP is required.

Members of the media who wish to attend should contact:
Natalie Biasin, Kreab Gavin Anderson: 020 7074 1864 or email: nbiasin@kreabgavinanderson..com
Melissa Read, Kreab Gavin Anderson: 020 7074 1826 or email: mread@kreabgavinanderson.com
Additional details are available at: http://hsmai-europe.com/calendar/hsmai-europe-conferences/revenue-management-internet-marketing-strategy-conference/