Advertisers do not feel the direct blow of the generative AI on traffic like publishers. But they see what is coming. Tripadvisor, for its part, already adjusts its strategy because the foundation of research begins to change.
It is not going complete Dotdash Meredith – the publisher has openly prepared for a future without traffic google – but a recalibration is clearly in progress.
“Google’s IA mode in research will eat big research pieces,” Matthew Dacey told Tripadvisor. “It will happen quickly as they [Google] Push it and more people adopt it later. »»
Until now, this change has not landed with full force in the travel company. According to Statita, monthly visits oscillated between 146 million and 169 million at the start of 2023. In February 2025, this number fell to around 120 million.
Yes, some of these diving hollows with the deployment of IA’s overviews – Google’s passage on the surface of the responses directly in the search results. But the story behind TripAdvisor’s traffic change is greater than any functionality. In fact, that is part of a longer arc: the way people find information change. Tripadvisor, like everyone, learns to meet them there.
For Dacey, it starts with the repositioning of Tripadvisor not only as a utility, but as a daily habit – something that people turn regularly, whether they sail, planning or already on the way to holidays. Less research, more morning ritual.
The execution of this vision comes down to three things: improve the application experience, refresh the membership program and move Tripadvisor above in the funnel – transform the service into a starting point, not just a step along the way.
If it works, hope is that it will cause more connected behavior, especially on the application.
“Right now, we have more than 100 million active members’ accounts, but not many of them use the application,” said Dacey.
This is where AI arrives. With this context, the application can postpone personalized recommendations at the right time.
Or as Dacey said: “All our outgoing push notifications can be the questions that travelers could ask them and serve them using AI according to the content generated by the user on our site. These are contextual information for exactly what is in someone’s mind.”
A new brand campaign is intended to help win this message. The launch this month will mark TripAdvisor’s 25th anniversary while cementing the brand as a direct planning destination – not just a Google link to the results.
“The way I would describe what we are doing is two things: how do we try to be more direct with people, then, on the other hand, it is to know how we show where people are really,” he continued.
One of these places is perplexity. Tripadvisor’s partnership with the AI research startup, announced earlier this year, makes it possible to consume behavioral data and preferably to which traditional search engines cannot generally access. In return, Tripadvisor’s organized hotel lists appear in Perplexity summaries.
Six months, Dacey said the results were promising – although he did not share the details. Tripadvisor said the agreement brought more intentional users, in particular those ready to book.
Finally, this partnership will extend to include restaurants and experiences. The Playbook: Generate income, drive qualified traffic and cut a presence in discovery environments powered by AI.
“What tends to work in these environments are longer queries, so we are in good position at Tripadvisor, because longer requests for specific use cases will always find their way to interesting content,” said Dacey. “The question for us is then how to get credit for this and how we translate this influence into something tangible on our side.”
This optimism points to a larger dynamic. Brands like TripAdvisor can be better positioned than the AI era publishers. On the one hand, they do not monetize the pages viewed in the same way. They can afford to lose traffic without losing income. And unlike publishers, they can move advertising dollars – move spending in performance or partnership to compensate for what is lost in research.
This does not mean that CMOs like Dacey are not worried. They are. But they also have more options.
“Of course, advertisers will feel second-order traffic effects from declining research like CPCs are increasing, but it is not comparable to publishers who consider this traffic like their blood-life,” said Tim Hussain, co-founder of the Consulting Company in IA signal42. “A CMO can always reallocate this money in other channels and escape it – well up to a point.”
