Expedia Group Ad Builder FAQ

Ad Builder from Expedia Group Media Solutions accesses the world’s travel advertising platform, with a global brand portfolio that includes some of the world’s most trusted online travel brands. It allows advertisers to easily create, purchase and manage ad campaigns across Expedia Group’s network of brands.

Ad Builder allows you to reach travelers shopping on Expedia Group websites and direct them to a new
web page (either on or off Expedia Group websites, some policies apply. You advertise with Expedia
Group by creating an Ad campaign. Creating an Ad is easy, it just requires Targeting and at least one
Creative.

Targeting allows you to show your Ad to a selected group of visitors, while the Creative is the image or
text that the Advertiser will see on Expedia Group websites. Don’t worry if you don’t have a Creative, you
can build one from scratch in our easy-to-use Creative builder!

You can customize your Ad to display to only selected groups of visitors that browse Expedia Group websites. The process of customizing your Ad to be shown to selected visitor groups is called targeting, which you do through our targeting options. Read more in the Targeting Options section.

On the ad you will include one or multiple creatives. A creative is the image that will be shown to the visitors you target. You can either upload a completed creative from your hard drive (like a JPG image) or make one from scratch through our easy-to-use creative builder. When you upload or create your ad, you will see a preview. Read more in the Creative section.

When you have finished creating your ad, you will be taken to the cart. From here you can choose to pay for the ad or put more ads in your Cart. We offer two methods of payment: 

Credit card payments 

When you have finished creating your ad, you will be taken to the cart. From here you can choose to pay for the ad, or to add more ads to your cart. Ad Builder supports payment by credit card through our secure payment provider, and many major credit card providers are supported. 

Invoice payments 

If you would like to choose the invoice payment option, you will need to reach out to us ahead of time at adbuilder@expedia.com and express your interest to join the invoice program. You will then receive an invoice agreement from us to sign. Once this step is completed, we will enable the invoice payment option on your account. You can select it at check out when completing your campaign’s purchase.   

Read more in Billing.

After paying for your ad(s), the ad(s) that were in the cart will be organised under one order. You can use the order pages to print your receipt for the transaction, or to reach the ads that were in the cart when you paid for them. You can also reach all ads in all bookings through the Orders button on the left hand side. 

Each country, brand, and placement combination will have a set base price or CPM. If you add targeting, the calculated CPM will increase according to the target pricing. The CPM is calculated as the price per 1000 visitor impressions.

Each country, brand, and placement combination will have a set base price. If you add targeting, the calculated price will increase according to the target pricing.

Any copy on your advertisements must be in the language that aligns with the point of sale that they are being served on. Ex: if you are running an ad on Expedia France, the copy of your creative and link URL will have to be in French. 

You can update your account information by clicking on the user icon in the top right corner, then Profile. You will then need to select the second tab called “Billing”.

You will be asked to enter your billing information when buying your first ad campaign. This information is then available for editing in the Profile page. Some fields require you to contact Ad Builder Support for assistance.

You can either log out and do it through the Login page, or you can do it on Profile > Account when you are logged in.

In order to change the email address on your account, you need to contact Ad Builder Support. A contact form is when you click on the user icon in the top right corner, and then select Support. 

To stop an ad from delivering, pause it from the Creative Details page. The ad will stop delivering impressions. Once the campaign has completed, you will receive a refund for unspent funds if you paid by credit card. For invoice payments, you will only be charged for the impressions that have already delivered.

Campaigns that have been submitted and paid for can be edited from the Campaign Details page. Certain options will no longer be available for editing compared to when you initially created your campaign, such as adding new targeting types (e.g. adding kid targeting), budget, and dates. In order to use new targeting types, add new budget, or change dates, you can pause your delivering campaign, copy it and submit a new one with new dates.

The campaign may have passed the end date and become Completed. To deliver more impressions, you need to create a new campaign.

Another reason may be that you have paused all creatives. If you still have issues, please contact us. A contact form is available through the support option once you click on your user icon in the bottom right corner.

Throughout the platform, e.g. on your campaign details, you will find the ad status. These are:

Draft: The ad has been submitted and is currently being created in the internal Ad Builder systems. This process can take up to 30 minutes after it has been submitted.

Inactive: There are no approved creatives applied to the ad.

Ready: At least one creative has been approved and the ad is ready to go live at the set start date.

Completed: The ad has fulfilled the set budget and is no longer delivering impressions.

Inventory released: The ad has been cancelled and will no longer deliver impressions.

Delivering: The ad is currently delivering impressions.

Paused: The ad has been paused and is no longer delivering impressions. The ad must be resumed in order to deliver impressions.

You can customise your ad to display it to only selected groups of travelers that show on our Expedia Group brands. The process of customising your ad to be shown to different visitor groups is called targeting visitors, which you do through Targeting Options.

What are the targeting options available?

Targeting options are available according to the Campaign products available to you in the Create Campaign section. Examples of targeting options available are site and Visitor location. Note that the ad placement you choose when creating your campaign decides which options are available to you. Our targeting options are:   

Travel destination or point of interest

Reach people who are planning to travel to specific location, based on their search history. You can search by destination or popular attraction names.

Geography

Reach people who are located within a specific geographic area. You can search by country, state/equivalent, city, region, etc.…

Please note that an additional CPM rate is added when each targeting option is activated.

Your Ad can be shown to any visitor who visits the Expedia brand you selected for your campaign (ex: Expedia France). This is not recommended for specific destinations as the chance of the ad being shown to relevant visitors is lower compared to if you set Targeting options.

You can either upload a completed creative (JPG, PNG) or produce one from scratch through our easy-to-use Creative Builder, depending on the placement you choose. Advanced users can also use a third-party tag.

All submitted creatives need to be approved by the Ad Builder team before the campaign goes live. You will be notified by email if your creative is approved or rejected. You also have the option to submit new creatives after your campaign has been purchased, at no additional cost.

The Build a Creative tool is available in the Creative section for our Native placements. This option is great to use if you do not have a creative available. Just fill in a couple of fields, upload an approved image, and the creative will be produced for you.

Creatives can be submitted during the campaign creation. If you have campaigns in the cart, you can edit them and include more creatives. If you have paid for your ads, you can submit new creative(s) by clicking visit campaign details and selecting the Edit button.

Creatives will be approved or rejected by the Ad Builder team within four business days.

You cannot edit an approved creative on a running ad, but you can add new ones. You can pause (and resume) the creative as well!

Manage the creatives on a campaign by visiting the campaign details and selecting the Edit button.

Throughout the platform, e.g. on your ad details, you will find the creative status. These are:

No creative: No creatives were submitted for this ad. The ad will not deliver until a creative is submitted and approved.

Waiting for approval: A creative has been submitted but is waiting to be approved by the Ad Builder team.

Active: At least one creative was submitted and approved, the ad is ready to deliver.

Inactive: The creative(s) has been paused.

Rejected: The creative(s) was rejected and the ad cannot deliver.

Expired: The ad passed the end date before the creative was approved.

We recommend running multiple versions of creative to test image and message relevance. If possible, try to isolate your variables (image, copy, CTA) to know what is working best.

During the booking process, after you’ve selected your preferred placement, select <Upload creative> to add your first version. Once saved, simply click <Upload creative> again to include additional versions within the same campaign. You can then move on to finalize booking your campaign.

You may also return to add multiple versions of creative after booking your campaign. From the Dashboard or Campaigns page, open the campaign you wish to add creative to, and select <Edit>. From here, you may upload one or more creatives and save.

You can request assistance with the translation of your creative(s) free of charge if you book a campaign on a point of sale that is non-English speaking. Translations will be provided by the Ad Builder team within three business days. You will need to reach out to us in order to request a translation. 

The Creative Library tool is available for all placements in the “Ad creatives” section. This option allows you to consult creatives previously uploaded on your other campaigns. In the library listing, creatives in statuses Approved, Rejected or Draft are made available. You can re-use those same creatives with the option to edit them if needed.

Please note that depending on the creative status, the creative may need to go through our usual approval process again once cloned and/or edited. You can refer to the following status descriptions to assess if your creative needs approval:

Approved status: If the selected creative has an Approved status, it will not need to be re-approved unless it has been modified. If you decide to make edits to your selected approved creative, it will need to go through the approval process once again.

Rejected status: If the selected creative has a Rejected Status, it cannot be used without updates. The rejection reason is displayed at the top of the creative detail page in the library, so advertisers can refer to it when editing the creative.

Draft status: the creative has not gone through the approval process. It will need to be submitted for approval to go live.

Additionally, creatives are set on Market level. For instance, if a creative is added for the market “United States”, it will not appear in your creative library on any other market. You must create a separate creative for the second market.

You can access your reporting at all times by clicking on “Reports” on the left-hand side. The dashboard will present real-time data about the performance of a subset of your ads. The Campaigns page will present a list of all your ads and present performance numbers.

The Reports section will allow you to download a report containing all performance-related numbers. You can also activate automated scheduled reports that will be sent to your email.

The following metrics are available in the exported reports in the Report section. Note that some metrics may be filtered on a certain date range, depending on the settings that were set when creating the report.

Booked impressions: The number of impressions you budgeted for when you created your ad.

Budget: The budget you set on the ad when it was created.

Clicks: The number of clicks that occurred during the filtered period.

Delivered impressions: The number of impressions that occurred during the filtered period.

CTR: The “click-through-rate” is the number of clicks received, divided by the number of delivered user impressions. The CTR is presented in percentages.

Spend: The spend of an ad based on the delivered impressions.

Credit card payments 

When you have finished creating your ad, you will be taken to the cart. From here you can choose to pay for the ad, or to add more ads to your cart. Ad Builder supports payment by credit card through our secure payment provider, and many major credit card providers are supported. 

Invoice payments 

If you would like to choose the invoice payment option, you will need to reach out to us ahead of time at adbuilder@expedia.com and express your interest to join the invoice program. You will then receive an invoice agreement from us to sign. Once this step is completed, we will enable the invoice payment option on your account. You can select it at check out when completing your campaign’s purchase.   

Credit card payments 

When you submit your payment in the cart, you will be charged for all ads in the cart. 

Invoice payments 

You will be invoiced for the budget spent at the end of your campaign, on the 10th of the following month (ex: if your campaign ends on the 2nd of February, your invoice will be sent on the 10th of March).  The campaign spent amount due appearing on your invoice will need to be paid within 30 days upon receipt. 

Credit card payments 

If your ad delivers an impression number lower than what you budgeted for, the platform will automatically refund the amount that was not delivered to your credit card after the ad has ended. 

In the event of under-delivery of impressions, the value of non-delivered impressions will be calculated and refunded. Please note that the validity period of the credit card used to purchase the ads should cover the whole delivery period for all ads that were part of the booking, as refunds can only be issued for the same card used during the payment of the ads. Please refer to the Terms and Conditions for details about our refund policy. 

Invoice payments 

If your ad delivers an impression number lower than what you budgeted for, you will be charged for the total of delivered impressions only, for all ads scheduled in the Order. In the case of ad cancellations, the same logic applies and you will only be invoiced for any impressions that may have been delivered already. 

You can update your payment information by visiting your user profile and clicking on "BILLING" next to account details. Please note that for invoice payments, your billing information must be valid and kept up to date as the invoice will be sent based on the billing contact assigned to your Ad Builder account.

Tip #1

Make sure your ad is shown to a relevant audience. Use the different targeting options available to you to make sure impressions are used for visitors with interest in your ad.

Tip #2

Make sure your creative is high quality! If you don’t have any, choose a native placement and you can create one through our creative builder.

Tip #3

Add multiple creatives to your campaign! This allows you to review the performance of each creative through the Campaign Details page. You can then pause the creatives that are not delivering as well as the others, and we will only deliver impressions on the ones that you don’t pause.

Tip #4

Create multiple campaigns! You can put as many campaigns as you like in your cart. This allows you to test different targeting option combinations to see which ones work best. Next time you buy campaigns, you can then focus on the options that delivered the best performance.