About property promotion ads

Property promotion ads support Hotel campaigns by listing your properties in prominent positions across Google’s immersive Hotel search results. Property promotion ads are designed to increase traveller consideration, drive incremental traffic and help generate more direct leads while travellers decide where to stay.

Note: Property promotion ads no longer use bids from booking link ad groups. To create property promotion ads, you’ll need to use property promotion ad groups.

Benefits

Determine which properties to promote based on your goals
Drive direct leads from distinctive placements across Google
Prominently place your property in front of travellers choosing a place to stay

Get started

Property promotion ads are open to all advertisers globally that meet the following criteria:

Have an active Hotel Centre account linked to at least one Google Ads account
Have at least one active landing page in Hotel Centre
Have at least one image of the property available for use in your ad

If you’ve met the established criteria to create a property promotion ad, consider promoting properties that:

Experience periods of low occupancy
Are new to a market and need to raise brand awareness
Are recently renovated or have expanded their services (for example, added a spa, outdoor recreation area or partnerships with nearby activities)
Are more relevant or desirable than usual due to a big event in the area
Are currently having a flash sale (or that you're willing to offer at a discounted rate for a limited time)

Where your property promotion ads appear

Property promotion ads can appear in multiple places across Google. As of late 2023, the appearance of property promotion ads on Google’s immersive Hotel search listings was updated and travellers are no longer sent to the 'Sponsored' tab.

By serving your ads at the top of Google Search results, you’ll have a more consistent experience that aligns your charged clicks and impressions. Review the details below to understand how your ads and your charged clicks will work after this change.

Understand your charge events

For all property promotion ad placements in immersive Hotel search, you’ll be charged for the click that sends a user outbound to the partner site. The following clicks are 'charge events' in property promotion ads:

Clicks on the list view carousel card
Clicks on the list view inline ad (when placesheet is open)
Clicks on the 'similar hotels' card in the Overview tab

How Google chooses what hotel imagery and information to show in your property promotion ad

Google is currently changing the policy on image provisioning and surfacing across property promotion ads. To make sure that your ads are meeting a high standard of quality, you’ll soon be able to display images directly uploaded from your price feeds.

Google Search results

Appears on desktop and mobile

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.

This illustration shows an example of an ads carousel on Google Search.

An illustration of hotel promotion ads appearing in a carousel at the top of Google search results

Hotel search results

Appears on desktop and mobile

When you search for 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.

List view

Up to 20 property promotion ads can appear in a carousel at the top of list view.

Desktop

This animation represents Hotel Search Listview on desktop.

Mobile

This image is a representation of Hotel Search Listview on mobile devices.

Desktop with placesheet open

Property promotion ads display differently when a traveller is viewing a placesheet. When a hotel’s details are visible on desktop, the list of hotels becomes narrow and the ad carousel disappears. As a result, up to five property promotion ads may be displayed among organic results.

Overview tab

Up to six property promotion ads can appear in a carousel below the booking links in the hotel listing’s 'Overview' tab. Similar to list view, when a user clicks on one of these ads, they’re sent directly to the partner’s landing page.

Desktop

Mobile

Google Maps

Property promotion ads in Google Maps will appear on desktop, but not on Android or iPhone mobile apps. Your ads will return to these surfaces in 2024.

Desktop in Search

Up to two property promotions ads can appear at the top of search results when you search for hotels. When a user clicks on one of these ads, they will be presented with the hotel details page or 'placesheet' or be taken directly to the advertiser’s booking site if the click is on the 'Visit site' banner. On the hotel details page, the hotels booking module paid positions are occupied by the winning property promotion advertiser. Only outbound clicks to the advertiser website will be charged.

Desktop on Basemap (new as of August 2023)

Property promotion pins on Maps surface on the Maps basemap on desktop. These trigger when the user’s viewport focuses on an area where the user isn’t frequently located. This means that triggering shouldn’t occur within the user’s home area or the areas that the user visits regularly.

If a user hovers over the pin, a hovercard appears. A user can click on either the top half or bottom half of the hovercard.

When a user clicks on the top half of the hovercard, the user is led to the placesheet, where the advertiser is the only partner shown in the paid booking links. Outbound clicks on these links lead to the advertiser’s website. A click is logged and charged.

An animation demonstrating how clicking the Maps hovercard opens the placesheet.

When a user clicks on the bottom half of the hovercard, the user is led to the outbound deeplink. Uses are then sent to the advertiser’s website. A click is logged and charged.

An animation demonstrating how clicking the Maps hovercard opens the property's website.

If a user clicks directly on the pin, the user is led to the placesheet. Outbound clicks from the placesheet lead to the advertiser’s website. A click is logged and charged.

An animation demonstrating how clicking the Maps pin opens the placesheet.

Advertisers are able to show property promotion ads for all pin positions. However, it’s unlikely that one advertiser would show all pins.

Set 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's linked to your Hotel Centre 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:

Starting 30 April 2024, commissions (per stay) and commissions (per conversions) bid strategies will no longer be available for new Hotel Ads campaigns.

Active Hotel ads campaigns with commissions-based bid strategies will continue to serve until 20 February 2025. Review commission-based bid strategies in Hotel ads to sunset to learn more about your next steps.

Learn more about Bidding overview for Hotel ads.

Reporting for property promotion ads

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.

Example

Let's say that you have 10 properties that are applicable to the query with bids above reserve. If there are two ad positions on the page, eligible impressions are awarded to the top two properties as ranked by our auction. Partners won't receive an eligible impression if their bid is below reserve.

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 Manchester, eligible impressions in Salford, and eligible impressions in the Greater Manchester area, then the Greater Manchester area might contain eligible impressions from both Manchester and Salford.

Impressions

Hotel Search and Google Maps

An animation that shows hotel promotion ads in a placesheet.

An illustration of hotel promotion ads that appear in Listview – Desktop.

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. For property promotion ads pins on Maps, impressions are logged when the pin appears on the user’s basemap.

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.

Note: Starting in 2023, the PPA auction will no longer use booking link bids and will exclusively use property promotion ad group bids. If you don't have property promotion ad groups set up for a hotel, your campaign will stop serving property promotion ads for that hotel. If you want to use property promotion ads to drive traffic to your hotels, you’ll need to add them to a new or existing property promotion ad group.

Note: For the pins on Maps format, clicks are only charged for outbound links to the partner website:

Outbound clicks from the placesheet, such as:
- When a user clicks on the pin: Outbound clicks occur when users click out to the partner on the placesheet.
- When a user clicks on the top half of the hovercard: Outbound clicks occur when users click out to the partner on the placesheet.
When a user clicks on the bottom half of the hovercard: Outbound clicks occur when users click on the bottom link in the hover card.

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