Google Is Leaning on Travel to Sell Its AI Ad Story

Skift Take Retail and finance drove Google's search ad revenue this quarter. But Google chose travel — IHG for its newest ad format, Booking Holdings for cloud and AI-powered transactions — to show investors where its AI business lines are converging. Travel made a cameo during Google's latest earnings call: Tech executives described how the company is applying artificial intelligence to search advertising, cloud services, and transactions, using travel to illustrate traction across all three. Travel searches carry more usable details than most other categories, with dates, budgets, and desired destinations and amenities. The details give Google more signals for matching a paid offer to what a traveler is actually planning. Google is putting this data-heavy approach into practice with major industry players. IHG Hotels & Resorts will soon surface special offers during AI