• by Colin Kirkland , Yesterday

Building on its recent hospitality in-app monetization program, TikTok is launching AI-powered “Travel Ads” -- the company’s first ad format designed specifically for travel brands.

Travel Ads, according to a company blog post, is a catalog-based advertising format designed to enable travel brands to “automatically promote their hotels, flights, and destinations” using personalized creative.

TikTok has updated its Smart+ AI system to include travel-specific optimization models, which work to identify high-intent audiences ready to book hotels. The models then match these users with travel offerings based on their in-market activities and preferences.

The ByteDance-owned social media company hopes that automating the process delivers travel brands with more relevance, higher engagement and stronger campaign performance.

Travel brands can expect the ads to showcase hotels, flights, and destinations as TikTok's travel intent model pairs with the brand's catalog data to enhance targeting relevance. Brands can also launch AI-powered campaigns that automate the setup, creative generation, and delivery optimization.

Each Travel Ad also includes a clickable “travel card” featuring relevant information about the brand's offering, such as a hotel name and rating, pricing, flight information and discounts.

“Travel cards are built using details from the catalog and appear two seconds after the video ad starts playing,” TikTok writes. “They support up to 10 cards (in the Single Video format) and auto-slide every four seconds to keep the experience engaging.”

Overall, TikTok is highlighting its role as a growing exploration tool, stating in its post that 84% of its user base watches travel content at least once a month, with 66% of users naming the platform as their primary source of travel inspiration.

The announcement comes less than two months after TikTok launched “TikTok Go,” a creator monetization tool designed to help creators earn commission-based payouts and sponsored perks when promoting hotels, restaurants, local experiences and other hospitality-related services in cities across the globe.