• by Cree Lawson , January 7, 2009

Using the long tail to put heads in bed and cheeks in seats. I know, I know. It sounds like a bad anatomy lesson. But that's the best way I can describe what's been going on in the travel media landscape over the last couple of years.

How is fragmentation--or the long tail as we like to call it--affecting the media landscape? Here's my take on that.

Travel has one Dinosaur of a long tail. Long. Long like a brontosaurus tail. There are 10,623 travel sites in travel last time Hitwise counted and 31%-32% * of site visits lie in sites 100-10,000, depending on whether you ask comScore or Hitwise. That means the reach of the long tail is nearly as large an audience as Expedia's.

And it's rich a rich tail too. And a strong tail. I mean like Brontosaurus strong. What do I mean? Travel represents over 44% of ecommerce spending. While the growth in non-travel ecommerce has slowed from 21% CAGR to 10% CAGR, Travel ecommerce has stayed steady in the first 3 quarters of 2008, only slipping from 12% to 11%. That's a strong long tail. And still more of an anatomy lesson. Learn it.

So how are we using the long tail to wag the dog? Any network worth its salt knows you can't just lump it up and say "here it is--your long tail." Or you'll wind up looking like the south end of a north bound mule. You have to add value by aggregating the best inventory from the scattered masses of fragmentation that the search engines have created. For us, that added value is destination intent.

If you think about it, online media is inherently different than every other kind of media. I'm going to go kindergarten media planner on you here but bear with me...A billboard is a billboard whether anyone drives by it or not. A TV show is a TV show. Posters in the bar bathroom are well...you get the picture. With online, every page load is a representation of potential demand.

In our case, every page load is a representation of demand from one person to go from one place to another. That means that just by having one ad on a page, we have our finger on the pulse of 19,200,000 people looking to go somewhere else. We have our finger on the pulse of world travel demand. Or maybe it's up the nose of world travel demand. Or maybe its...well, we reach a lot of travelers earlier in their travel planning than anyone else. We organize travel demand and aggregate it for media planners.

I think that one of the most overlooked changes in the online media landscape over the last few years is the trend in Search Engines away from listing one property multiple times on Search Engine Result pages. Where you used to enter "New York Hotels" into Google and get 4 listings for TripAdvisor, you now get one listing for the hotel review site with a few more "sub" listings. That creates opportunity--and traffic--for more niche websites like NewYorkHotels.com. It's a win-win. Consumers get the answers they're seeking and the travel media landscape is even more democratized, even more of a meritocracy.

So who clicks on NewYorkHotels.com over TripAdvisor? The adventurous traveler, the engaged traveler. Someone who's digging a little deeper and searching a little harder to plan the best two weeks of their year. That's our traveler--the lifestyle traveler. Not someone who's kicking the tires on their 13th three-day business trip to Tucson but the one who is digging a little deeper, being a little more adventurous and willing to potentially willing to pay a little more for a differentiated travel experience rather than a commoditized mode of transport. That's our Upper funnel, long tail traveler. I know, I'm sounding like an anatomy lesson again.

*Hitwise includes mapping sites in the travel category. comScore does not. I've left out the mapping sites in my Hitwise to arrive at the data listed above.