At this year's Retail Media Impact Summit in Amsterdam, IAB Europe's Retail Media Consultant, Yara Daher, hosted a fireside chat with Bram van Asperen, Senior Commercial Manager - Advertising at Booking.com, exploring what makes Travel Media different and the opportunities ahead as Commerce Media expands beyond traditional retail.
From longer customer journeys and fragmented advertiser relationships to measurement and industry standards, Yara shares her key takeaways and highlights from the conversation.
Retail Media is often viewed through a traditional retail lens: a product, a price, and a shopper who buys it. Travel doesn’t fit that picture neatly, and that is why it deserves attention. At the Retail Media Impact Summit, I spoke with Bram van Asperen of Booking.com about what makes travel media different and what the industry needs to do next.
Bram kicked off with a suggestion: rename the “Retail Media Impact Summit” to “Commerce Media Impact Summit”, and the room responded. Speakers and hosts who followed our fireside chat even started referring to it as the Commerce Media Impact Summit.
Here are some of the key differences and challenges we explored:
A longer, more complex journey. Travel media spans the full funnel. Destinations and tourism boards work near the top, trying to inspire people to consider a place they may not have thought of. Flights act as an anchor product: once someone books a flight, they often book accommodation, then cars and attractions. Each step brings different advertisers with different objectives.
Time-sensitive inventory. In retail, a product can be sold today, tomorrow, or until it runs out. A hotel room or an airline seat is tied to a specific date, and once that date passes, the inventory is gone. Advertising, yield, and pricing have to work together in a way that is more intricate than in most retail settings.
A fragmented advertiser base. Securing a full partnership with a major hotel chain means working at several levels at once. Budgets sit at headquarters, at regional offices, and at individual hotels. To unlock the full potential of these partnerships, a platform needs to work with hundreds or even thousands of properties under one brand.
Measurement and trust. Travel’s long lead times change how results should be read. People may book weeks or months ahead, cancel, rebook, and then stay months later. The gap between booking and stay affects attribution windows and how we define new-to-brand customers. Taxes and fees add another layer of complexity, since what is included in a price, such as resort fees, determines whether offers can be compared fairly.
Bram was clear that the industry needs transparent outcomes before it can have better conversations about performance. Too often the discussion stops at how one platform compares with a competitor, a question that only works if the comparison is truly like-for-like.
IAB Europe's First Draft Travel Media Measurement Addendum is currently open for public comment. Developed in collaboration with a broad group of industry stakeholders, it provides an important starting point for bringing greater consistency to Travel Media measurement.
Bram and I also discussed what comes next, including certification. Already a major focus in Retail Media, Bram agreed that extending certification to Travel Media would be a natural next step and highlighted the importance of travel businesses engaging in the process.
Listen to the conversation: Want to hear more from Bram? Listen to our Retail Media Roundtable podcast with Bram van Asperen, recording live at the Summit
Travel Media Measurement: IAB Europe’s First Draft Travel Media Measurement Addendum has been open for public comment and will be released in the coming months.
