Social Media and Marketing

Travel search site Kayak has chosen to work with digital marketing software company Kenshoo for its search engine marketing campaigns.

Some of Kenshoo Enterprise’s most important features for travel marketers include:

·    Dynamic campaigns using inventory and promotion data feeds to automate keyword/ad creation

·    Flexible bid algorithms that automatically manage keyword portfolios to different margin goals

·    Cross-channel path-to-conversion tracking and attribution to incorporate all consumer touch points -- including search, social, display, email and many others -- to improve campaign management and performance

As per the information available, 679 million user queries for travel information were processed through Kayak’s websites and mobile applications during the first nine months of 2011 (according to Kayak’s amendment to Form S-1 registration statement as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission in November last year. The company filed for its IPO in late 2010).

Kayak believes it can significantly increase the number of people who use its websites and mobile applications.

The company balances its marketing investments between brand marketing campaigns designed to grow brand awareness and online marketing investments designed to generate additional query volume. During the first nine months of 2011, the company spent $45.6 million on Kayak, swoodoo and checkfelix brand marketing.

The purchase of travel-related keywords consists of anticipating what words and terms consumers will use to search for travel on general search engines and then bidding on those words and terms in the applicable search engine’s auction system. As a result, there is bidding against other advertisers for preferred placement on the applicable general search engine’s results page. Kayak spent $36.0 million on online marketing during the nine months ended September 30, 2011.