The Trade Desk: travel booking journey now spans more than 64 days
At Cannes Lions, Kelly Covato, general manager of business development for travel at The Trade Desk, told Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan that the travel booking journey has stretched into a loop lasting more than 64 days, according to research published by the company. Consumers now move among connected TV, podcasts, mobile search and AI tools across inspiration, research, price comparisons and booking, often abandoning and returning to the process days later. "This traditional funnel that we keep talking about in marketing is becoming more of a loop," Covato said. She pointed to The Trade Desk's UID2 identity solution as a tool for recognizing the same traveler across those channels, and described how travel companies are increasingly opening their first-party data, covering income, home airport, party size and cabin class preference, to media networks run by companies such as United Airlines, Marriott, Expedia and Booking.
Campaigns built around a single booking moment miss most of that 64-day loop, and identity-based targeting becomes the tool for staying visible to the same traveler across CTV, audio and mobile touchpoints along the way. Expedia Ads research cited by Covato found travelers spend more than $500 between booking a trip and taking it on clothing, luggage and credit cards, so budgets planned only against airline and hotel inventory miss a spending window that retail, finance and travel-adjacent brands can now target through travel media networks. Covato also flagged marketing mix modeling and incrementality testing as ways to credit connected TV and other exposures across the long booking window, an approach that matters more as AI tools start fielding travel questions that used to go to search engines.