Hotel Price Ad Ranks Explained

Understanding Ad Ranking is a very important part of running a tight, well optimized campaign on Hotel Finder. The data that describes ranking can cause some confusion if you are not familiar with the Slot and Slot Position metrics, so here’s what you need to know…

Slot

The Slot value describes the different areas where your ads can show and vary by Search Type. Potential Slots by Search Type are:

  • hotelfinder: A (top,) M (more,) and Z (didn’t show.)
  • placepage: A (top,) M (more,) and Z (didn’t show.)
  • localuniversal: M (top,) and Z (didn’t show.)
  • mapresults: M (top,) and Z (didn’t show.)

Screen Shot 2013-12-04 at 3.33.02 PM

Screen Shot 2013-12-04 at 3.38.06 PMNote that searches on localuniversal and mapresults don’t expose two sets of ads, instead they show a price that a user clicks to view the total group of ads, as shown in the image to the right.

Because of this, these two Search Types do not currently have A slots. In the cases of localuniversal and mapresults, M indicates the top – and only – visible Slot. These slight differences by Search Type are important to understand when making bidding decisions based on Ad Rank.

Slot Position

Slot Position describes in what rank within the Slot the ad showed up. This is a 0-index value, meaning that “0” indicates first place, “1” indicates second place, and so on. In the example to the right, Orbitz is in Slot “M”, Slot Position “0” – and some people call this rank “M0”.

A value of “-1” indicates that the ad did not show and will always be coupled with the Z Slot. Potential Slot Position values by Search Type and Slot are:

Search Type Slot A Slot M Slot Z
hotelfinder 0, 1 0, 1, 2 -1
placepage 0 0, 1, 2 -1
localuniversal 0, 1, 2, 3 -1
mapresults 0, 1, 2, 3 -1

For more visuals, check out our overview on SlideShare.

Next Steps

With a deeper understanding of Ad Ranking values, you should now be able to conduct a more thorough analysis into your campaign performance and expose new bid opportunities. Have any questions on this topic or any others? Comment below or e-mail us any time.

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