Verve is a global ad solution that helps brands, agencies, and publishers activate consumer intent in real-time across platforms. Learn more.

[00:00:00] Marcus Johnson: This episode is sponsored by Verve, an ad solution that helps brands activate consumer intent in real time across platforms. As AI reshapes how people plan vacations, Verve helps travel brands show up when it counts. Find out more at Verve, V-E-R-V-E, .com. The biggest shifts in digital won't happen one at a time.[00:00:20]

[00:00:20] Marcus Johnson: They're happening all at once. Join EMARKETER's The Future of Digital Summit on September 15th, which is tomorrow, in New York for exclusive analyst research, conversations with leaders from top brands and agencies, and networking with the executives defining marketing's next chapter. Click the registration link in the show notes for tickets.

[00:00:38] Marcus Johnson: It's not too late.[00:00:40]

[00:00:44] Marcus Johnson: Hey, gang. It's Monday, September 14th. Gadjo, Anna, and listeners, welcome to Behind the Numbers: an EMARKETER Podcast made possible by Verve. I'm Marcus. And joining me for today's conversation, we have two folks, senior analyst on the media team, living in New York City, it's Gadjo Sevilla.

[00:00:59] Gadjo Sevilla: Hi, [00:01:00] everybody. Happy to be here.

[00:01:01] Marcus Johnson: Hello, hello. And we're also joined by a special guest based in the UK, vice president of global brand partnerships at Verve, Anna Slater joins the show.

[00:01:10] Anna Slater: Thanks, Marcus. It's great to be here.

[00:01:12] Marcus Johnson: Welcome, welcome. Anytime we have a special guest on, we start with a speed intro.

[00:01:19] Marcus Johnson: Two [00:01:20] questions, uh, for you, Anna. One for you, Gadjo. Anna, I'll start with you. What does your company do in a sentence, and what do you do for them in another one?

[00:01:27] Anna Slater: Good question. Have you ever seen that episode of Friends where people don't know what Chandler's job is? That's, um, gonna be me right now because-

[00:01:35] Anna Slater: none of my friends and family know what I do. So this is a good learning curve for them, right?

[00:01:38] Marcus Johnson: A transponster? Um- I [00:01:40] think that's what Rachel, uh, guesses- Yeah ... during the pr- That's

[00:01:42] Anna Slater: right Yeah. Um, so essentially what Verve does, we're the gatekeepers of some very rich consumer intent data, and our job here is to obviously make that data addressable and accessible for brands and advertisers all around the world.

[00:01:55] Anna Slater: And my job specifically here is to help evangelize that message to brands [00:02:00] directly.

[00:02:00] Marcus Johnson: Very nice. Second question goes to you both. Anna first. What's the best thing you've read, watched, or listened to recently?

[00:02:05] Anna Slater: I am a bit late to the party on this one, but my husband bought me a book recently called Invisible Women, which basically identifies, uh, gender disparity in data, and it was absolutely fascinating and I would implore anyone to read it.[00:02:20]

[00:02:20] Marcus Johnson: Very nice. Um, who's it by?

[00:02:22] Anna Slater: Carolina Criado-Perez- Okay ... if I'm pronouncing that right. But yes.

[00:02:25] Marcus Johnson: Okay. All right. I'm going hunting. Gadjo, how about you?

[00:02:29] Gadjo Sevilla: So it's not new, but I've been re- re-watching the show Halt and Catch Fire. It's about the, uh, computer industry, so tracing the time before, when, when [00:02:40] the IBM PC came out, all the copycats, all the way to the, to the start of the internet, right?

[00:02:46] Gadjo Sevilla: It's drama, but it's also very well-written and it has a lot of Easter eggs from possibly companies and, and personalities you, you may know. So I found that quite riveting.

[00:02:57] Marcus Johnson: Even when he's not working, he's still working, folks. [00:03:00] He's out here. Uh, what, what, what, uh, channel is that on? What streaming service?

[00:03:05] Gadjo Sevilla: It was on AMC, but I think you can- Oh

[00:03:07] Gadjo Sevilla: find it. It's a few years old, so it's- All right ... should be out there.

[00:03:11] Marcus Johnson: A few things to hunt for. Very nice. Well, they are our two guests for today. But today we are talking about why are travel's biggest brands invisible in [00:03:20] AI answers?

[00:03:25] Marcus Johnson: EMARKETER senior editor Lisa Haiss notes that nearly two-thirds of adult travelers under 45 would use AI for travel recommendations on their next trip. That's according to Simon-Kucher's Travel Trends 2026 [00:03:40] report. Uh, I think just under half of Gen X, about 30% of boomers as well. So fair amount of those demographics too.

[00:03:48] Marcus Johnson: But Annie, you have some new research, uh, tracking lots of real AI, uh, trip planning conversations. Give us one of the headline findings from this research.

[00:03:58] Anna Slater: So just to sort of maybe take a step [00:04:00] back, what Verve has been able to do is analyze quite a significant number of AI conversations. Mm. Um, so and specifically around travel.

[00:04:07] Anna Slater: What we actually found within that subset, uh, and a conversation where it's at least one answer, so we know that there's been a prompt, and we know that there's been an answer to that, is that a significant portion are a- of those tr- [00:04:20] travel brands, and when I say those travel brands, we looked at America's top 84 travel brands and also the top 10 searched about destinations.

[00:04:27] Anna Slater: Mm. So just to be super clear, it wasn't a holistic view of, of everyone in the travel space, but it was looking at obviously the biggest and, and the brightest- The governances ... so to speak. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly that. And actually four in five of those brands are not showing up at all. [00:04:40] So it's an amazing stat.

[00:04:41] Anna Slater: Something where we assume now that obviously travel is very much like you just said, it's very much appearing obviously as that new travel agent in the modern world. Mm-hmm. But unfortunately what we're seeing is these largest brands are not actually having a voice straight away, which is fascinating.

[00:04:54] Marcus Johnson: Yes. Four, so 80% never mention one of these major travel [00:05:00] brands. Were you telling us before that that's even if they're asked about, they're, they're still not showing up?

[00:05:04] Anna Slater: If they're asked about, they will be showing up. Um-

[00:05:07] Marcus Johnson: They are? Okay ...

[00:05:08] Anna Slater: not, it's not always like for like. Yeah. We are seeing that some brands actually, if there's a s- a prompt where it specifically names a brand, you would then expect the level of responses to mirror that.

[00:05:17] Anna Slater: Yeah. Actually, we're seeing some brands [00:05:20] will be, you know, heavily researched about or, you know, it'll go into that prompt, but actually they're really lagging in the response actually that's coming through. So there's still work to be done. Yeah. Equally, there's that flip side as well, where actually brands are doing really well in terms of not being mentioned by the consumer, but actually coming out on top.

[00:05:34] Anna Slater: So it's a real mixed bag at the moment.

[00:05:36] Marcus Johnson: Why, I guess the next question has to be why are brands missing from these responses? [00:05:40]

[00:05:40] Anna Slater: I would love to say I, I know the answer. We're still so early, really, where it's kind of an, we're in the infancy of our AI journey in this phase. So to draw a complete hypothesis would be kind of unfair of me.

[00:05:50] Anna Slater: But I do think there's a level of sophistication from the prompt itself. Consumers need to feel familiar, right, with this new world of where they're researching. When we were taught, and I'm [00:06:00] old enough to remember how to be taught to use the internet, is we would go into Google obviously, and we would have to be super clear i- in, in what we were saying.

[00:06:07] Anna Slater: That eventually became down to just putting keywords, right? What we're used to now as a consumer is just putting keywords in. Now, the problem is if you are putting keywords in w- in an AI environment, you're getting keywords out. You're not getting the, and extracting that same level of value. [00:06:20] So the consumer really needs to be sort of, I suppose, educated that actually if you want really sophisticated responses, you've got to put a lot of detail into that in the first instance.

[00:06:30] Anna Slater: So it's just retraining how the consumer obviously approaches it. Another point is that what we're seeing as well is the questions that are being asked don't necessarily warrant a brand to appear [00:06:40] in the response. So it can just be as simple as, "What's the weather like in Portugal in March?" You wouldn't expect a brand to be surfaced at that point.

[00:06:49] Anna Slater: So it's not AI's responsibility at that point- Raining. Want an umbrella?

[00:06:52] Marcus Johnson: Yeah.

[00:06:53] Anna Slater: It's, you would, you would expect them to obviously only respond when it's actually necessary. And we are seeing that. You know, as [00:07:00] conversation depth comes on, we are seeing brands appear in that. So it's not a case that they're not necessarily being mentioned, but it's just taking them longer as well to get that.

[00:07:10] Marcus Johnson: Yeah. Gadjo, what are your thoughts on this kinda transition between people just typing in a couple of keywords and them getting used to the more conversational nature of these large language [00:07:20] models?

[00:07:20] Gadjo Sevilla: Yeah. I think the, the key thing there is what you said, conversational, right? So when you have the intent of, say, booking a trip in a specific location, specific timeframe, you can spell out what you need, whether it's, uh, trip deals, place to stay.

[00:07:35] Gadjo Sevilla: I think that helps AI surface, uh, more accurate [00:07:40] results. I don't know if that's going to change now that there's advertising in, in a lot of these AI chatbots, if that's gonna bring up preferred brands, whether or not they're tangentially related to what you search for. So I mean, that, that could happen.

[00:07:53] Gadjo Sevilla: But I find myself, from, from my own use, that AI has been pretty good at kind of nailing [00:08:00] down general travel information. But it- it's hard to get specific information on an airline or seating or prices or even deals, right? So I mean, that could change, but right now you have to have more than one conversation.

[00:08:16] Gadjo Sevilla: You have to continue to kind of dig deeper. And it al- it doesn't always [00:08:20] lead you to where you want to go. That tells me we're still early in, in, in this whole process.

[00:08:25] Marcus Johnson: I think there's a lot of people who agree with you. I found some research in that same Simon-Kucher Travel Trends Report. Half of people thought results were too generic and, uh, quote-unquote, "didn't appeal."

[00:08:37] Marcus Johnson: And, and a part of the problem there is you guys identify half [00:08:40] of all travel conversations are just one single prompt.

[00:08:42] Anna Slater: And that's tough, right? Brands have got to find a way to have their voice, whether it is through the advertising, as you say, or whether it comes through, obviously, the education and, and maturity of the consumer as they start to become more familiar with these kinds of platforms.

[00:08:54] Marcus Johnson: You were also able to identify what was coming back most of the time in these [00:09:00] AI answers. What, what did you find there?

[00:09:02] Anna Slater: It sort of makes sense when you're looking at it, obviously retrospectively. So destinations lead- Mm-hmm ... is what's happening at this point. So you're putting in a q- a travel query of some description, and obviously destinations are being surfaced through.

[00:09:12] Anna Slater: And quite often, a lot of the time, you know, AI, uh, assistants, they're being used for, "I want to go away this time of year. I've got this [00:09:20] budget." Right. "I want to do this type of itinerary. What do you think?" And so it makes sense that the first response is going to be a destination. It also made sense when you think about the seed data that's coming through the LLM, right?

[00:09:31] Anna Slater: They're taking it from publishers. There's a lot of content across the open web-

[00:09:36] Gadjo Sevilla: Right ...

[00:09:36] Anna Slater: around destinations, and so that is naturally going to come [00:09:40] forward a- and sort of take an priority and dominate the responses that are coming through. I think when we come down to if the, th- if it was- More sophisticated like, "I need an airline to fly me to said destination," then absolutely, that's where you'll see the brand surface a little bit quicker.

[00:09:54] Anna Slater: But when it's more in that dreaming and inspiration phase of travel, where you typically either have gone to a travel agent or [00:10:00] gone to a Google or so forth, then obviously now we're moving them to, into the LLM space, and that's what they're teaching, that's what they're using it for.

[00:10:07] Marcus Johnson: You'd mentioned before assistants are routing people to meta search and not replacing it.

[00:10:12] Marcus Johnson: Um, what's going on here?

[00:10:13] Anna Slater: As someone who's worked in the travel industry for many, many years, there was always an element of nervousness. And, you know, I'm still really fond of the high [00:10:20] street travel agent because that's where I started my career, right, all those years ago. So I never want to see the dissolution of that.

[00:10:25] Anna Slater: But there is a fear that obviously as technological advancements are happening, that AI can necessarily do the job what a high street travel agent is doing. Mm-hmm. And I, I still d- I don't believe that, but that was the fear. And actually, what we're finding is that certainly just through the, [00:10:40] the, uh, conversations that we analyzed, that AI is, they're actually recommending meta search brands through.

[00:10:45] Anna Slater: So again, it's, it's kind of like it's not here to replace, but it's actually directing consumers through to them, which is really surprising, um, and not something we expected to see at all.

[00:10:54] Marcus Johnson: Do you have some, uh, some case studies?

[00:10:56] Anna Slater: The one thing that we found, so from this particular research, is that we were [00:11:00] looking at the level of prompts per subcategory within travel.

[00:11:03] Anna Slater: So if you think travel is such a, you say it is so broad, you've got cruise within that, airlines, and cer- hotels, and so forth. When we looked at the depth of sort of responses from a brand level, we found that it only took around 3.3 prompts in order for a brand to surface in the cruise [00:11:20] industry. But when we looked at, say, when someone was researching about car rentals, it was actually 14 prompts before a brand ever made it to that- Oh, wow

[00:11:28] Anna Slater: which was really fascinating. So we can't look at the vertical in its totality and say that, you know, every single one responds in that same way. It takes X number of prompts in order to get a brand surface, because [00:11:40] actually it's very different even within the travel industry itself. And that cruise piece was really fascinating for us, 'cause we just wrapped up another piece specifically on cruise, where we were looking actually about- Uh, AI research within the cruise space and then also open web search because we also have access to that type of data as well.

[00:11:58] Anna Slater: And what we found actually there is [00:12:00] that as soon as a consumer has researched about, um, a cruise within the AI space, they instantly went on to search that brand straightaway. So we found that actually AI is shortening that path to purchase specifically- Mm-hmm ... within the cruise environment. And we also found that typically cruise is a very loyal category anyway.[00:12:20]

[00:12:20] Anna Slater: But in terms of researching about it, they, Americans were only looking at, on average, one brand per, you know, destination and trip that they wanted to take. So they really weren't exploring other brands. It's like their mind had already been made up. So we had this amazing piece of research that we've just obviously wrapped up and we're talking about today is that only takes three prompts, but then we've [00:12:40] also got this other research that's showing that once they leave that LLM environment, they're going straight away and searching about that brand.

[00:12:45] Anna Slater: So again, it, it's too early to make a, draw any hypothesis between the two, but we, you know, it's something that we want to explore again in other sub verticals within the travel space too, to see- Yeah ... if there's that same element of, of consumer behavior.

[00:12:58] Marcus Johnson: Kajo, I wonder what your thoughts are here. 'Cause [00:13:00] that, that's a huge discrepancy considering they're both travel, three prompts versus 14- Yeah

[00:13:04] Marcus Johnson: before brand shows up. Um, any thoughts here, Kajo?

[00:13:07] Gadjo Sevilla: I mean, I'm thinking that's just for AI search, right? I was thinking about agents. You can now set up an agent to look for travel deals for specific pricing, [00:13:20] but a lot of that information is, is sort of time or algorithmically released, like, you know, deals come and they, they expire on the clock.

[00:13:29] Gadjo Sevilla: So it, it feels like a game of cat and mouse for a while. I think as, as consumers get more sophisticated and they learn how to use the technology, you know, maybe that's [00:13:40] something they, they, they'd like to look into. Like, "This is my budget. Let me know when something- Comes out within this budget from this airport, and the agent is working maybe 24/7 to, to find that.

[00:13:52] Gadjo Sevilla: Mm-hmm. But then the window to act again is, is very small, right? Or very short. In the future when the agents have [00:14:00] our wallets, maybe it can actually put the down payment or make the buy. I mean, I'm sure some people are doing that already. There's a confidence conflict there for, for a lot of consumers.

[00:14:10] Marcus Johnson: Mm-hmm.

[00:14:10] Anna Slater: I think that's a really valid point, actually. Yeah. And sorry, just draw out on that one, is that I remember working in the travel industry when obviously mobiles were all of [00:14:20] a sudden moving forward- Yes ... right? And there was a real, if you think about when, you know, people used to book a holiday, it was, "Oh, we get our computer out and we do that because it's a big purchase.

[00:14:28] Anna Slater: We have to have a big screen. We can't- Mm-hmm ... possibly transact on a mobile." Still

[00:14:31] Marcus Johnson: me.

[00:14:34] Anna Slater: Yeah. Do you, um, obviously turn the music down when you're driving as well? Maybe. Yeah. Okay. I thought are you one of those? Yeah. Um, [00:14:40] and so I think there's an element of just like you say, confidence, is that- Yeah ... we've already seen that transformation going from the smallest device and now it's, again, it's still a big ticket item, travel is.

[00:14:50] Anna Slater: It's not something you make, it's not whimsical in any way. And so once there's confidence and people have done it and they know it's secure and safe, then I think we'll start to see that. And obviously the technology needs to be there. [00:15:00] Um, but I think it- you're right, where it's just still in that early phase of this journey.

[00:15:04] Gadjo Sevilla: And it's exciting to see where, where it can go, right? Because there's just so many, uh, layers to, to that discovery journey for, for consumers. You mentioned earlier about educating them. I think that, that would be huge. Um, I mean, I can think of a [00:15:20] Trivago ad explaining how that works. A similar way to show how you could find the best trip deals, maybe, you know, the ideal locations, uh, point in time.

[00:15:32] Gadjo Sevilla: I think showing how to, how to get to that point would be beneficial for, for consumers.

[00:15:39] Marcus Johnson: Yeah. There's a real [00:15:40] educational element here. All right, gang. Uh, let's end with this. What's next? What should brands, uh, take away from this conversation? What's, uh, a couple of things, Anna, that they should be doing?

[00:15:49] Anna Slater: I mean, there are quite a few things.

[00:15:50] Anna Slater: I think this research has been really eye-opening in, in many ways. I think it's not necessarily about ranking yet, um, because we're not even there, uh, in terms of obviously [00:16:00] making sure that the brand is the first in, in, in that response. It's actually about being present in the first place. So it's education, obviously from the prompt that's going in and really helping to get to the bottom of does this assistant have any reason to mention you as a brand at all?

[00:16:16] Anna Slater: And that's where I think there could be a lot of scope for [00:16:20] improving destination content because we know that destinations are being typically coming up as that top answer straight away. There's lots of readily available content obviously around certain destinations, and I think that could be a really worthwhile pivot to real- see some investment in that dation- destination adjacent content here.

[00:16:38] Anna Slater: So we know that they're [00:16:40] leading first in placement, so making sure that brands are attaching themselves to that to give more scope for them to be recommended in the future. I think beyond that, we can't automatically assume that having great brand awareness generally in the public eye equals AI visibility yet.

[00:16:56] Anna Slater: So we have to have brand familiarity being earned [00:17:00] separately, uh, in that answer layer as well, because obviously what's happening obviously in the real world isn't necessarily at the moment translating to what's happening in the AI world. So I think we just need to make sure that as a brand we're not naive to the fact that we're going to be automatically recommended and, and put forward in that conversation.

[00:17:16] Anna Slater: So, you know, lots that we can, uh, well, lots that brands could [00:17:20] certainly be doing, but obviously it's just sort of a journey that we're all on together at this stage.

[00:17:23] Marcus Johnson: Pun well intended. Uh, Gadjo, how about

[00:17:29] Gadjo Sevilla: for you? Totally not intended. For brands, I mean, all brands are now challenged to, you know, make their information available and searchable by humans and, and by machines.

[00:17:38] Gadjo Sevilla: And for- You know, for [00:17:40] your brand to surface in AI, there's a, there's a lot of work in the background, but usually the information is already there. It just needs to be put in a, in a, in a searchable geo kind of, uh, format so that it, it's easier for, for machines to find it. And also, a lot of people still [00:18:00] value things like conversations on, on, on Reddit, for example.

[00:18:03] Gadjo Sevilla: So brand visibility can extend to talking to your customers, explaining new deals, new, new destinations. All of that information is usually ingested by AI, and it's kind of preferred because it's, you know, a live human, it's recent. So, you know, [00:18:20] being visible in, in, in those forums as well and representing your brand, I think that helps kind of add to the probability that y- your brand will come up, uh, for a specific topic.

[00:18:30] Marcus Johnson: Last episode we had, uh, September 11th was, uh, Reddit's growing importance. Um, so I think, yeah, it's an excellent, um, example. That unfortunately is all we have time [00:18:40] for for this episode. But thank you so, so much to my guests. Thank you first to Anna.

[00:18:43] Anna Slater: It's been an absolute pleasure chatting with you guys.

[00:18:45] Anna Slater: Thanks so much.

[00:18:46] Marcus Johnson: Pleasure's been all ours. Thank you to Gadjo.

[00:18:48] Gadjo Sevilla: Thank you. This has been so informative.

[00:18:49] Marcus Johnson: Thank you, fella. Uh, thank you to, uh, the production crew. We've got Stuart who runs the team, Danny who runs video, and, uh, Luigi, who God knows what he does. Uh, thanks to everyone for listening in to Behind the Numbers: an EMARKETER Podcast made possible by Verve.

[00:19:01] Marcus Johnson: He bothers me. That's what he does. He's always pestering me. Suzy Davidkhanian will be hosting the Reimagining Retail show Wednesday, talking about holiday shopping, and I hope to see you on Friday for more Behind the [00:19:20] Numbers.