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How AI is redefining the travel marketing landscape – Unsplash image credit
Excerpted from PhocusWire
When ChatGPT first went mainstream, it seemed to many that the multi-billion dollar world of travel search marketing was about to change overnight.
It didn’t happen that way.
“When the whole ChatGPT thing blew up, I was very optimistic that it would be a huge shake-up because users would be so excited,” said Mario Gavira, vice president of growth at the travel agency. Kiwi online.
“In fact, it didn’t move the needle at all or, if it moved at all, it was marginal.”
The first major test of AI’s influence on search came when Microsoft began integrating OpenAI’s GPT-4 into its search results in February 2023. At the time, Bing had a share of market of 2.8%, compared to 93.4% for Google. A year later, that figure had risen to just 3.3%, with Google at 91.6%, according to Statcounter.
It is now clear that the influence of generative artificial intelligence on search marketing is more of an evolution than a revolution.
There’s going to be a slow migration from what we call search to this convergence of search and AI,” said Robert Patterson, who leads the AI center of expertise at travel marketing company MMGY Global .
Advertising dollars will follow…eventually.
“Brands are so dependent on the results of pay-per-click advertising and have a lot of confidence that it’s a safe place to invest. There will be some hesitation to move,” Patterson said .
“Relevance is where it’s at and if AI provides more relevant and detailed results, it will ultimately win.”
Understand how search works
The black-box nature of AI, in which its creators may not know how it arrives at the results it produces, could also prove difficult for travel companies trying to outsmart the algorithms.
MMGY develops tools for brands that analyze how their content is perceived by AI-powered search engines to advise them on how to change the structure of their content and data for better performance.
“We need to produce content for both human consumption and machine consumption,” Patterson said.
Still, it seems unlikely that these new entrants’ search results will remain click-free forever.
A Perplexity spokesperson told Phocuswire that it plans to start running ads before the end of the year, first in the U.S. and internationally over the next year.
Click here to read the full article on PhocusWire.
