FACE-TO-FACE: Ross Weber, Co-Founder, CEO of Clicktripz.com
Contributors are not employed, compensated or governed by TD, opinions and statements are from the contributor directly
How did the idea for Clicktripz come about?
In 2007 I was running business development at VirtualTourist – in charge of their “Check Rates” button to monetise visits to the hotel review section. This was early “meta-search”, in that the user could compare prices from multiple sites. However, it was a terrible user experience and real meta-search sites like KAYAK were already doing a much cleaner job surfacing this type of price comparison in a single browser window, where the user could compare prices before leaving KAYAK.
The reason the check rates functionality persisted for so long was because it was so profitable for travel publishers like TripAdvisor and VirtualTourist. Like many consumers however, I hated the experience. This is why I went to work for Kayak after VirtualTourist was sold to TripAdvisor in 2008. I wanted to get away from the “check rates” pop up world and work for a cool, sophisticated technology company.
When I moved to KAYAK however in 2009, revenue per hotel search was about a third of what I was making per hotel search at VirtualTourist. Sexy technology was great, but at these monetisation levels, I wasn’t sure how we could be competitive. The answer was media revenue – the pop under ads you see on the KAYAK home page today. This type of media revenue generated 30% of total revenue back in 2009 and KAYAK’s profit margin was 30%. KAYAK’s “check rates” product also offered a limited number of pop under windows, so I felt it was definitely a better balance between monetisation and user experience, than the monetisation-heavy TripAdvisor.
At this point a light bulb went on for me. I realised just how important this type of media revenue could be to travel publishers. I bought the clicktripz.com domain for $9.95 – as a placeholder. I wanted to build a more elegant solution that could help travel sites more effectively monetise traffic, without sacrificing usability. Finally, in 2010 I connected with Eric and David Bjorndahl, who had previously built a travel site called TravBuddy. I had the business contacts to sign up publishers and advertisers, and they had the tech acumen to build the product. Three months later, we launched with 7 hotel advertisers and 3 publishers.
How can Clicktripz help OTAs and Hotel brands with conversion rates and monetisation?
We have two primary product lines at Clicktripz. The first product line is based around monetisation of users who visit your site without booking. If you’re a really good OTA with strong conversion rates, you might be looking at a 3% conversion rate. That means 97% of the time a user comes to your site, they are leaving without generating any revenue for you. Instead, we target relevant display ads and a leave-behind exit unit to these users. These types of units typically generate effective CPMs of $100-$300 USD. This is significant incremental media revenue that helps OTAs be much more competitive in this increasingly challenging environment.
Earlier this year, we purchased a big data company to help us build out our second line of products that help OTAs and hotel brands boost same session conversion rates. The idea for this product line actually came about when we got feedback from one of our publishers that our exit unit was not only generating media revenue for them, but they also saw an uptick in conversion rates when they ran our ad unit.
It appeared we were displaying ads from competitors, generating media revenue for publisher, AND improving conversion rates for the publisher. This seemed a little too good to be true, but in the case of this publisher, it absolutely was true. This led us to the theory that the more transparent you are with your users, the better your conversion rates will be. The “conversion boost” product line shows prices from other channels directly on your website. Whether you’re an OTA or a hotel brand – this strategy works. We’ve seen conversion uplift of anywhere from 10-30% by leveraging this type of price transparency product.
Clicktripz displays adverts of competitors, which is a new way of thinking for most OTAs – how do you help companies get their head around this concept?
Often we find we are dealing with OTAs or hotel brands that say they are in the middle of a site redesign, or rebuilding their a/b testing platform (if they have one), or give another excuse for not being able to test our technology. But, really, it seems many want any excuse not to test, because this is a tough way to think about your business, if you’re an OTA or hotel brand. For years, you’ve been spending millions of dollars to build your brand and get users to your site, and convert those users into loyal return users. The cold hard reality however is that if you look at your source or loss traffic, you will see that your users are going to your competitors anyway. Our platform simply gives those competitors an opportunity to bid as much as they possibly can to target those users, rather than let them scatter across the web or back to Google to run yet another search.
We’re having the same conversations in Europe as we were five years ago in the U.S. Our pitch to hesitant publishers is really this: There’s a reason KAYAK has been using similar techniques for a decade, and there’s a reason Expedia displays meta rates on Expedia, and there’s a reason we have a 98% retention rate with any publisher who tests our technology. And, if you’re still in doubt, then we can tailor a very small scale test where we will provide you all the tools and transparency to help you make an informed decision. We live in an age where results are very quickly quantifiable. Test and learn.
What is the success rate of Clicktripz?
I can’t remember the last time somebody tested our technology and didn’t end up continuing to use it in some form. Different publishers have different needs and we tailor our technology to balance those needs. One publisher might only want to show our ads to users from Italy, Spain, and Germany. Another publisher might only want to show ads to users on an iPad. We can do all of that, and we support 35 local language and currencies, so we have a very flexible solution.
What big global OTAs do you have on board right now and what has been their feedback?
The biggest OTA we work with in Europe is LastMinute Group. In the U.S., all the major OTAs advertise on our platform and three of the top 25 are publishers.
The most telling piece of feedback we get is simply that our technology is still running on all of our publishers. Every so often, we have some drinks with our partners and they might confide in us that they love us and that we’re the single biggest source of revenue in their business. Very rarely does this happen, and not once have I attempted to renegotiate the terms of our deal afterwards. We know our publishers like tapping into the revenue we deliver. It’s like reaching into the couch and pulling out 10s of thousands of dollars per month that they had no idea were even there. It’s meaningful revenue for our partners, and I love writing those cheques! Our results are also reported in real time, so often we get an email from new publishers a few hours after launching asking, “Is this real? Is this what I’m making?”. Seeing really is believing, and sometimes even after publishers view the results, they’re still not convinced – that’s why I love writing the cheques. Money talks.
What has been the reaction of the UK market to Clicktripz and who do you have on board in this market?
LastMinute
STAtravel
HolidayCheck
DealChecker
As we add more publishers, we gain more credibility in the UK market. In Russia, one well-respected OTA started using our solution. Sixmonths later, I think we have partnerships with three out of the top four OTAs in Russia. I believe the same scenario will play out in the UK. In many cases, these are old UK travel businesses that were offline, which are now online. Our experience has been that they’re a little more set in their ways in the UK than other countries like the U.S. or Russia, but as soon as they test and see the revenue, or hear how much revenue their competitors are making, they quickly come to appreciate what we offer.
What are your goals for growing your business in the UK market and why?
Our goals are to work with the top three to five OTAs in each of our markets. We don’t seek to power 1,000s of affiliates and we don’t offer our type of technology outside the travel vertical. We want to work with the biggest and the best in travel and provide the best possible products and white glove services to these partners. We didn’t raise tens of millions of dollars, we don’t have huge overheads, and we never plan to build our technology for other verticals. We don’t have to. Our approach to growing this business is very measured. We operate as efficiently as possible, so we can offer larger payouts to our publishers. We have been profitable for the last five years and pay all of our publishers within 45 days from the end of the month. This fact definitely helps our publishers have confidence to choose our solution.
What is the potential to grow your client base globally – what are the challenges and opportunities?
We think this model will gain a lot of traction in Europe in 2016. Latin America and APAC are naturally on the horizon. We don’t really know how this will play out and our assumptions may prove incorrect. We will go where we see opportunity. The challenges are simply educating publishers about our capabilities and motivating them to agree to test. There are huge opportunities for hotel brands and OTAs if they will be more transparent with their users, and we hope to provide the solutions to help them do this.
Comments are closed.