Airbnb has attributed a renewed focus on brand marketing instead of search engine optimisation (SEO) has helped it reach its most profitable quarter to date.

The home-sharing platform’s decision to move its marketing strategy away from SEO has resulted in it reducing its marketing overheads.

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As a result, the company does not anticipate any further cuts.

This comes as in 2019, Airbnb decided to prioritise more general marketing campaigns and PR.

Airbnb CFO, Dave Stephenson said: “Our brand marketing results are delivering excellent results overall with a strong rate of return, and it’s been so successful that we’re actually expanding to more countries.

“We’ve already kind of hit this new kind of lower overall rate. Certainly, we can moderate that over time, but we’re already so low that I wouldn’t anticipate us dropping it dramatically in the face of substantial headwinds with overall growth.”

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Airship makes four executive appointments
Customer engagement company Airship has made four senior leadership appointments including Dale Flores as vice president of sales for the Americas, Neil Gariepy as vice president of infrastructure and security, David King Harris as vice president of sales for EMEA, and Jeff Winsor as vice president of technology services.

Flores will lead the expansion of Airship’s Americas sales organisation, growing solution adoption to generate greater business value for customers throughout the region. He brings two decades of global SaaS sales and customer success management to the role, including 14 years leading sales teams at Silverpop and IBM, and, most recently, was head of customer success at Clicktale.

Gariepy will lead Airship’s customer engineering, infrastructure and security teams, with responsibility for expanding Airship’s infrastructure globally while further optimising its cost, performance and security. Like Flores, he brings 20 years’ experience to the position, including 16 years leading cloud applications and infrastructure processes at Netsuite. Most recently, he served as vice president of engineering and information security at Percolate.

King Harris will lead Airship’s EMEA sales organisation directing regional growth from the company’s new London office in Southwark and its locations in France and Germany. He brings nearly a decade of sales leadership experience driving European business objectives for martech companies including Lyris, Silverpop, IBM and, most recently, Movable Ink as regional vice president of sales for EMEA.

Winsor, who has led Airship’s program management function that spanned leadership of several different technical teams for six years, has been promoted to lead the program management, technical documentation, and quality assurance teams.

“Dale, Neil, David and Jeff bring an incredible set of leadership skills to further refine and scale our teams, technology and expertise to best serve Airship’s expanding global customer base,” said Brett Caine, CEO and president of Airship.

Ahrendts joins Airbnb board
Angela Ahrendts has joined the board of directors at Airbnb, becoming its third independent non-affiliated board member.

For the past five years, she oversaw global retail at Apple, integrating the company’s physical and digital businesses across its online store, app and more than 500 retail stores in 25 countries. Prior to Apple, Angela spent eight years as CEO at Burberry, where she tripled the business and created the Burberry Foundation. That gig was preceded by her role as executive vice president at Liz Claiborne Inc., and earlier as president of Donna Karan International.

“I am elated by the opportunity to join Airbnb’s board of directors at this important phase on the incredible journey of the company and its community of hosts and guests,” said Ahrendts. “I have known Brian [Chesky], Joe [Gebbia] and Nate [Blecharczyk] for years and have a deep admiration and respect for their vision, purpose and the positive impact they want Airbnb to make in communities all around the world.”

Merkle brings in Stagg to head EMEA client services
Dentsu Aegis Network’s performance marketing agency, Merkle, has hired Anne Stagg to take up the role of vice president of client services for EMEA.

She will be responsible for the strategic direction of a portfolio of clients, predominantly across retail and travel, as part of the EMEA Client Services leadership team – while also extending the delivery of Merkle’s integrated data-driven services.

Stagg previously held the roles of managing director at Indicia, and head of client management at Experian.

“I’m really impressed with the team Merkle has built, having worked with many of them previously,” said Stagg. “What most attracted me to the role was the opportunity to work with the very best talent and technology the industry has to offer. Merkle’s portfolio of clients is fantastic and perfectly aligned to my experience. It’s particularly exciting that the role enables me to be client facing, delivering cutting-edge solutions, whilst also developing my team to be the very best they can be.”

Cortese takes charge of revenue at Singular
Marketing intelligence platform Singular has appointed Vince Cortese as its chief revenue officer. He will lead the company’s global sales team, helping expand the sales force domestically and internationally.

Cortese joins Singular from ad tech platform Kenshoo. Prior to that, he led sales at various levels in the marketing analytics industry at companies such as Adobe, IBM, Gartner, and Brandcast.

“I couldn’t be more excited to join Singular at this time as we are at the forefront of innovation in the marketing intelligence space,” said Cortese. “Singular not only has the best in class solution to help growth marketers meet their top line growth goals but our focus on customer centricity has been a major contributor to accelerating growth over the last few years. I am excited to be part of the team and help build out the company globally.”

Neuro-Insight selects Ginai as UK CEO
Shazia Ginai has been promoted to the role of UK CEO at Neuro-Insight, a neuromarketing and neuroanalytics company. In the role, which is effective as of 1 June, Ginai will be responsible for strengthening Neuro-Insight’s profile in the field of neuromarketing, as well as further expanding the business and its client portfolio.

Ginai joined the Neuro-Insight in 2017 as head of new business. Since then, the company has added a series of major brands to its client list, including The Telegraph, UKTV and Slimfast.

Before arriving at the company, she setup and led the global insight function at GHD. She preceded this with seven years at Proctor & Gamble, where she was responsible for designing and executing consumer research and building storytelling capability for their luxury fragrance and skincare brands.

Neuro-Insight’s previous UK CEO, Heather Andrew, will continue to work with the company as a non-executive director. Elsewhere, Mev Bertrand and Holly Jordon have been promoted to the roles of head of creative research and head of media effectiveness respectively.

‘’Having worked closely with Heather for the past 24 months, I am delighted to be stepping into the role of CEO at Neuro-Insight UK,” said Ginai. “The company has experienced astronomical growth under Heather’s direction, but while the rate of expansion has been significant (20 per cent year on year for the past four years), our targets remain ambitious. 

“It’s an exciting time for innovative research, particularly in the field of neuroscience, and we want to ensure Neuro-Insight remains right at the epicentre of this industry as it continues to grow and develop over the next few years.’’

Hillier joins Alorica to lead marketing
Customer experience solutions provider Alorica has added Colson Hillier to its executive leadership team in the role of chief marketing officer. He will be tasked with driving strategic planning, product development and execution of Alorica’s global marketing and communications initiatives.

Hillier boasts more than 20 years’ experience leading large-scale transformation in industries such as data services, ad tech, and fintech. Prior to joining Alorica, Hillier held numerous senior leadership roles at Verizon Wireless focused on new product development, big data Analytics, and digital marketing.

“Companies like Alorica have the unique opportunity to strengthen the connection between brands and their customers,” said Hillier. “I’m excited to be a part of the team and looking forward to making that happen by merging mind-blowing technology with vertical-specific commercial models so that brands can reach customers in the most impactful way not only now, but into the future.” 

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Details surrounding the deal have not been disclosed, but Airbnb has confirmed its investment in Oyo’s latest funding round. The Series E funding has passed $1bn and includes investment from SoftBank’s Vision Fund, Grab, and Didi Chuxing.

“Emerging markets like India and China are some of Airbnb’s fastest-growing, with our growth increasingly powered by tourism to and from these markets,” said Greg Greeley, president of homes at Airbnb. “In many of these markets, OYO is empowering local hospitality entrepreneurs to provide more options to more travellers. We share a dedication to offering people more choices when traveling and we’re excited to partner with OYO as we work to make Airbnb for everyone

Oyo currently operates in India, China, UK, Singapore, Malaysia, Nepal, Philippines, United Arab Emirates, Sri Lanka, Saudi Arabia, and Japan.

“Airbnb’s strong global footprints and access to local communities will open up new opportunities for OYO Hotels & Homes to strengthen and grow while staying true to our core value proposition,” said Maninder Gulati, global chief strategy officer at Oyo Hotels & Home. “We’re excited by the possibilities and committed to bringing benefits to the millions of travellers who can now rely on Airbnb and OYO Hotels & Homes to find a home away from home.”

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After 10 years in business, Airbnb has officially served half a billion guests in over 191 countries and 81,000 cities around the world. According to the accommodation platform, three guests check into an Airbnb listing every half-second. Although the company was not officially founded until 2008, co-founders Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia consider their first three guests to be Michael, Kat and Amol, who rented Chesky and Gebbia’s personal residence in 2007.

“These guests can now choose from 6m homes, yurts, treehouses, boats and more, scattered across six continents, as well as over 25,000 experiences available in over 1,000 cities. And today, Airbnb is proud to celebrate a new milestone: since our founding, half a billion guests have checked in at Airbnb listings worldwide,” said Airbnb in a post.

Additionally, the platform revealed that since its launch in 2008, hosts have now earned $65bn in revenue from listing their properties. Some of the most well-known Airbnb hosts are Peter, who owns a castle in Ireland, and Kitty and Michael, who rent out the popular Mushroom Dome in Aptos, California.

“Hosts Kitty and Michael have been hosting guests in the Mushroom Dome since 2009, when it became one of the first Airbnb listings located outside a city. Since then, it has amassed nearly 1,300 reviews, with guests coming from all over the world to stay in its cozy, 100-square-foot confines,” said the post.

75 cities around the world have hosted 1m or more guests, including Auckland, New Zealand; Mexico City, Mexico; Cape Town, South Africa; Havana, Cuba; Split, Croatia; Chongqing, China; and Busan, South Korea.

As of 2018, over half of Airbnb hosts are women, over 1m hosts are 50 and older, and more than 400,000 hosts are over the age of 60. Almost 70 per cent of all Airbnb guests in the past three years have been 40 or younger, and millennials around the world have accounted for over $31m spent on bookings.

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Airbnb aims to use the acquisition to add more boutique hotels to it platform, providing its users with last-minute availability at these hotels when possible home rental opportunities may have already been booked.

“A big part of building an end-to-end travel platform is serving every guest, whether they plan their trip a year or a day in advance,” said Brian Chesky, co-founder, CEO, and head of community at Airbnb.

“Working with the incredible team at HotelTonight, we will offer guests an unparalleled last-minute travel experience that provides unique, memorable hospitality on every trip, on any schedule, at any time.”

In 2018, according to Airbnb, the platform more than doubled the number of rooms available from hosts that were categorised as boutique hotels, bed & breakfasts, hostels, or resorts. In addition, it claims that its users booked three times as many nights at boutique hotels in 2018 compared with 2017.

Furthermore, almost 90 per cent of guests who first used Airbnb to book a hotel room – and returned in future for another booking – chose to book a home on their second visit. Based on this, Airbnb sees the acquisition of HotelTonight providing a positive impact for its home hosts in the long run.

Upon completion of the acquisition, HotelTonight’s CEO Sam Shank will begin reporting to Greg Greeley, Airbnb’s president of homes and lead of its boutique hotel category.

“We started HotelTonight because we knew people wanted a better way to book an amazing hotel room on-demand, and we are excited to join forces with Airbnb to bring this service to guests around the world,” said Shank.

“Together, HotelTonight and Airbnb can give guests more choices and the world’s best boutique and independent hotels a genuine partner to connect them with those guests.”

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Through the merger, Airbnb aims to strengthen its business travel branch, Airbnb for Work. Airbnb for Work enables business travelers to find convenient accommodation that stays within their work budgets. For the time being, Gaest.com will continue operating on its own platform, but the Gaest.com team members will join Airbnb.

“We’re thrilled to join one of the world’s most innovative companies and become an integral part of their mission to make it easier for professionals to feel a sense of belonging at work. Our dream from day one has been to make it easier, faster, and more cost-effective to list, discover, and book unique spaces that spark creativity, motivate interaction and encourage knowledge sharing,” said Anders Mogensen, co-founder and CEO of Gaest.com.

According to Airbnb, Gaest employees will work under the Homes business unit, reporting to president of Homes, Greg Greeley. Greeley has announced a plan to both “support the hosts who have always powered Airbnb and expand accommodation and service offerings into new areas.”

“We imagine a world where anyone can share their space for professional events and, in the longer term, for celebrations. Bringing in a leadership team with strong domain knowledge allows us to accelerate our work in this area, and more importantly Gaest.com and Airbnb share a vision of helping every space owner become entrepreneurs through sharing their spaces with those who need it,” said David Holyoke, global head of Airbnb for Work.

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With the creatively-named Pay Less Up Front, Airbnb users can choose to pay a deposit set by the hospitality service – usually 50 per cent of the total fee – and then pay the rest closer to the day they are due to arrive at their temporary abode. Previously, guests were required to pay 100 per cent of their rental price at the time of booking.

In testing, Airbnb said that 40 per cent of its users opted to use the Pay Less Up Front feature, and were also choosing higher-value bookings. The feature was also found to encourage people to book further in advance, with lead times nearly doubling compared to ordinary bookings.

The only caveats of the feature are that bookings must be made at least two weeks in advance and must total at least $250.

Pay Less Up Front follows on from another payments feature – introduced in November – enabling group travellers to split payments for accommodation between them.

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The online accommodation marketplace has welcomed Accomable and AdBasis to the company.

Accomable, founded in 2015, makes it easier for people with disabilities to find accessible accommodation when they’re travelling. It setup by Srin Madipalli and Martyn Sibley, two friends with spinal muscular atrophy.

The startup’s site will be slowly phased out over the next few months, with Airbnb adding Accomable’s listings to its service in over 60 countries. The company’s founders and most of its staff will join Airbnb.

“Previously, travellers with disabilities could only search for homes that were labelled as ‘wheelchair accessible’ when they were searching for an accessible place to stay,” said Airbnb. “Guests weren’t getting the information they needed to find the right homes, nor the confidence that the home they selected would actually be accessible for them.”

Meanwhile, AdBasis – founded in 2014 by Joe DiVita and Jason Puckett – is an ad testing and optimisation platform.

Little is known about the acquisition, but it closed on 13 November and its team will continue to work on what it specialises in under the Airbnb banner.

“Were thrilled to share with you that as of 13 November 2017, AdBasis has been acquired by Airbnb,” said AdBasis. “As part of Airbnb, our team will continue to pave the way in digital creative testing & optimization technology.

“We look forward to continuing to change the way the world views ads.”

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The accommodation service now tops the list of travel booking companies with the steepest fan growth on Facebook, taking the title from Secret Escapes, according to social media analytics company Socialbakers.

“What Airbnb does well is tell a story of escape and natural beauty during a time of year when work slows and the warm weather has many wanderlusting,” said Moses Velasco, chief evangelist at Socialbakers. “This is a prime example of brands understanding their audience, the digital platform and therefore contributing the right content, at the right time, to the conversation. Airbnb is just one example of how we can grow customer interactions and deliver more effective customer reach faster with targeted social media efforts.”

In the summer to summer period, DealChecker.co.uk enjoyed fan growth of 107 per cent and Trivago of 82 per cent. While Secret Escapes, HolidayPirates.com, and MyHolidayGuru.co.uk saw slowing growth. These growth figures could be seen as reflecting the increase of mobile in travel bookings, with consumers wanting 24/7 instant and direct access to listings.

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Felix Zeng, head of programmatic, Weather Company

“The analogy I use for Real Time Bidding is a flea market. There’s a plethora of inventory in there, but also a tremendous amount of fraud and inventory issues. Can you find some gems? Absolutely. But it’s something you really need to dig into.”

Starting the day was The Weather Company’s Felix Zeng, breaking down the way that the IBM-owned publisher breaks down its ad sales channels. Zeng said that, in his experience, RTB marketplaces tend to achieve a viewability rate of around 30 per cent – while private and curated marketplaces (which he compared to a high-end department store) see around 70 per cent, and automated guarantee (in Zeng’s analogy, a personal shopper) can get close to the 100 per cent mark.

Nicole McCormack, SVP revenue strategy & operations, Flipboard

“We at Flipboard have 75m monthly active users outside of the US, but our PMP business is still largely rooted in the US – so the open marketplace has been a good strategy for us to grow our international monetisation.”

In conversation with Rubicon Project’s Jocelyn Sheltraw, Nicole McCormack discussed the different approaches Flipboard is taking from country to country. She said the app considered itself a brand-building platform, with an emphasis on curation and user experience. Responding to Zeng’s analogy, she added: “We don’t want to be the flea market, we want to be boutique.”

Ryan Chandler, head of supply, BidSwitch

“A lot of the challenge that we see in PMP is just a case of human error. Me and my team, four in five of the problems we hear are that someone has copy-and-pasted a token wrong. Another big issue can be offering scale which just isn’t there – like promising a mass audience of Alaskan surfers, for example.”

Ryan Chandler shared his view on private versus open marketplaces, from Bidswitch’s perspective as a connector for both the demand and supply sides.

Mike Addonizio, director of platform solutions, Digilant

“The goal of marketing is not to acquire devices, necessarily, but to acquire and retain real people.”

Digilant’s Mike Addonizio took the audience back to 2007, when the cookie ruled supreme. It was a cautionary tale of becoming over-reliant on a single identifier, and he reminded the audience to consider what happens when consumer behaviour changes again, or if Apple shuts off access to device IDs.

Jason White, SVP & GM global programmatic revenue, CBS Interactive

“The reality is, all publishers have lots of first-party, cross-platform data. If we can start a co-op where all publishers put their data inside a platform, and advertisers are able to access those audiences – that’s our hope, that’s what we’re working towards. If 85 cents of your dollar goes to Facebook currently, we’d like to make it so next year that’s 65 cents, and then 55.”

Jason White talked about how publishers like CBS are trying to make their own way, in the face of
Google and Facebook’s dominance. That’s not to say the company has rejected the Big Two entirely, however. CBS has made big steps with Google’s AMP format, which White said has soared in terms of volume – but struggled to convert that into any meaningful ad revenue. AMP brings in $4.92 per 1,000 impressions, compared to $22.70 for the mobile web.

Matthew Hogg, head of programmatic sales, LinkedIn

“Three or four years ago, programmatic felt like this tidal wave that was going to hit the industry, and put people like me out of a job. I think the reality – as the concerns about brand safety this year have shown – is that programmatic is kind of a tearaway teen.”

LinkedIn’s Matthew Hogg talked about the maturity of programmatic, and the industry as a whole, as the two adapt to better fit together. The key developments currently, he said, were the moves towards quality (“We can’t just be focused on scale and low cost and sacrifice quality anymore”) and transparency (“People accept that a large amount of the data in the marketplace isn’t very accurate”).

Nemr Elsotary, global digital media lead, Airbnb

“We’ve shifted approaches over the past two years. We don’t worry about whether we’re using PMPs or open marketplaces so much anymore – we just worry about where can we find our audience, period.”

Airbnb’s programmatic spend is shrinking, according to Nemr Elsotary, as it struggles to reliably find its audience across different distribution channels, compared to its match rates of 50 per cent on Facebook.

Mathias Kruck, client service director, BidSwitch

“In addition to starting out with Facebook, I would advise using a DSP that you can ask a lot of questions. If you pick not one of the larger players but somebody who’s more mid-tier, there’s a lot you can ask them and learn from them.”

On the day’s closing panel, Bidswitch’s Mathias Kruck shared his tips for smaller brands dipping their toes into the waters of mobile advertising for the first time.

Jocelyn Sheltraw, senior director of mobile, Rubicon Project

“Because of all the issues we have with fraud and a lack of transparency, what we’re now seeing is that brand buyers are working directly with the SSP, and not through a middleman like a network. We’ve had to tailor our offering to that, and so we’re looking at things like curated PMPs, where we have a bunch of brand-safe inventory bucketed to make it easier to buy. It’s still something that’s being worked through, but we’ve seen this major transition in the past six months where it’s become really important.”

Jocelyn Sheltraw discussed the growing importance of related transparency issues for advertisers and how Rubicon Project is responding, in light of the brand safety revelations earlier this year.

If you want the chance to take part in these discussions next time, either as a partner or delegate, check out the Mobile Marketing Summits site for details of our upcoming events.

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