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Expedia Marketing Spend Levels May Reflect a Changing Advertising Environment

Dennis Schaal photo
Dennis Schaal
expedia group brands CEO Mark Okerstrom with team

Photo Credit: A September 2017 photo by Expedia Group CEO Mark Okerstrom at a charity event with some workers who support the travel company's more than 20 brands. Expedia reported its second quarter earnings on Thursday. Expedia Group

Skift Take

Has the worm turned? Have Expedia and Booking.com found a way to trim the growth of their bloated advertising spend? That would not be great news for some advertising platforms, and would be a significant change in the way the largest players conduct their marketing operations.

Has the competitive advertising environment in travel experienced a reset? One thing that investors and analysts keenly watch is the efficiencies in Expedia Group and Booking Holdings' advertising spend as they contribute billions of dollars annually to Google and other platforms in the form of digital and brand marketing. For the last year, Booking Holdings, in particular, and Expedia, as well, have been pulling back from some metasearch and other platforms. For example, Booking Holdings contributed 49 percent of Trivago's total revenue a year ago, but that fell to 38 percent in the second quarter. Expedia reported second quarter results Thursday and seemed to experience a watershed moment in that its selling and marketing expense of $1.54 billion fell 229 basis points as a percent of revenue to 53.5 percent. In other words, Expedia's selling and marketing expe

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