Expedia Group is furthering its reorganization efforts: The company shared exclusively with PhocusWire that it is moving its media business under CMO Jochen Koedijk.
The decision makes Expedia Group Advertising (EGA) part of the company’s global marketing organization.
Marketing and advertising are “two sides of the same coin,” Koedijk told PhocusWire. Bringing the two closer together will allow Expedia Group to productionize those solutions more quickly.
“EGA brings deep advertiser relationships and a proven media business,” Koedijk added in a release. “Marketing brings our brands, loyalty reach, first-party data, creative and technology capabilities that make those relationships more valuable.”
The shift indicates a deeper bet on advertising as a growth engine, with the advertising business growing 20% year over year. The goal is to tighten the connection between media, loyalty, brands and first-party data.
Expedia Group has been building out marketing and advertising technology for decades, he said.
“‘Dog fooding,’ as [we] like to say in tech companies, is a real thing. It basically means you consume the stuff that you built,” he said. “By bringing marketing and advertising closer together, it will make those solutions better.”
The integration will foster a “more unified and measurable system” connecting performance marketing, brand-building and media, according to Expedia Group.
The move positions it to act faster, unify insights across the platform and give advertisers more access to travelers.
Opportunity exists on both sides—but there’s more growth potential in advertising than marketing going forward.
“We still believe there is opportunity there, but that's not going to be infinite,” Koedijk said of marketing.
On the advertising side, there is “a lot more” room for growth.
Data, tech and solutions—and the expansion of those three “pillars” for partners inside and outside of the travel industry—represent “big opportunity” for the company, Koedijk said.
Expedia Group’s data, which includes loyalty, makes its position defensible in the marketing and advertising arena.
“What I expect partners to do is to have a portfolio approach very similar to how we have that as marketers,” Koedijk said. “It's our objective to maximize the share of advertising investments of the partners, and in order to maximize that share of advertising investments, you have to deliver measurable returns.”
“If you look at our last couple of earnings calls, you see how much we're leveraging our marketing, so we're growing our bookings top line while reducing our marketing investments,” he said. “We're doing that by clinically focusing our marketing investments on the outcome, and we know that partners expect that from us.”
Earlier this month, Expedia Group announced plans to merge its B2B and global supply businesses. Chief commercial officer Alfonso Paredes will lead the combined organization, with Greg Schulze departing the company after a transition period.
Expedia Group is hosting its Explore event in Las Vegas, Nevada, from May 19-20. Stay tuned for coverage from PhocusWire.