Opening the world via paid search

Travel search engine momondo books big returns with Bing Ads

Entering the world of travel and search advertising

When Niklas Lindgaard joined travel search aggregator momondo in January 2015, he was fulfilling a lifelong career ambition. “I really love to travel and spend as much time as possible travelling. When I’m not travelling, I’m planning where to travel next,” he says. “I thought it might be fun to move client-side and wanted to join a young and vibrant company with a product that I would find appealing. That’s how I found myself at momondo. My love of travel makes it really easy for me to identify with the mindset of our users.”

Lindgaard’s background in search engine marketing at one of Denmark’s leading startup SEO agencies included taking responsibility for paid search a mere three months after the company’s inception in 2010, a role he relished for almost five years.

Now, in his role as Global Head of PPC at momondo, Lindgaard heads up a specialist department in paid search, managing a team of search enthusiasts and a multi-million kroner budget. “It includes almost everything we pay for online, which is by far our biggest channel,” he explains.

For Lindgaard, what attracts him to paid search is its measurability. “Since we use online channels and have an online product, it’s very easy to measure everything we do. I really like to dig in to the numbers and get stuck in to the digital part of marketing.”

We have a global goal for momondo group of reaching one billion Danish kroner in revenue. Bing Ads is a key tool for us in achieving this.

Niklas Lindgaard, Global Head of PPC at momondo

Humanity meets technology

Niklas Lindgaard, Global Head of PPC at momondo

Lindgaard’s background and mindset is a great match for the momondo company ethos, which is to “open the world” to its users. It’s this mission that brought together a small group of skilled and committed Danish developers in 2006 to create the free, independent online flight search engine with full price transparency.

The company prides itself on its rare blend of humanity and technology. This is influenced by the Danish founder and entrepreneur Thorvald Stigsen who possesses a unique mix of creative intuition and mathematical skills from his diverse background in IT programming and modern theater.

The company’s ambition is to create a global brand that not only offers the same functionality as its competitors, but also a bold and colorful travel universe that inspires people to see the world through “new eyes” and encourages curiosity to try new experiences.

Growing revenue with Bing Ads

Table showing momondo's performance gains using Bing Ads: 9 percent lower cost per click, 20 percent higher conversion rate, and 47 percent higher return on investment.

The Bing Ads figures for momondo

Of course, integral to this ambition is growth. “We have a global goal for momondo group of reaching one billion Danish kroner in revenue,” Lindgaard explains. “Bing Ads is a key tool for us in achieving this. We really want to be visible across all channels and the competition in Bing is not as fierce as in some of the other search engines.”

With Bing Ads, momondo has found the cost per click (CPC) to be approximately 9% lower than its competitors. Also, the audience converts more often, which generates a better return -on -investment (ROI) for momondo when compared to other search engines.

It’s not just momondo that’s growing either. The Bing Network’s market share has been increasing in the Nordics in recent years. Currently, the Bing Network accounts for 5% of the market share in Finland, 6.2% in Denmark, 7.6% in Sweden and 11.9% in Norway, with a combined monthly search volume of 59 million searches. Bing has had a 48% year over year click growth in Europe and Bing now has a market share of almost 20% in the UK and 30% in the US. Momondo can’t wait to find out which countries the Bing Network will be expanding to next so they can launch pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns there and continue their growth together.

Lindgaard also embraces the full spectrum of features that Bing has to offer in his quest to maximize the earning potential of momondo’s paid search ads in existing markets. “I tell my team that it’s OK to try things out and make a mistake — just don’t make it twice!” To achieve this ambitious growth goal, momondo utilizes a mix of paid search strategies, including Remarketing in Paid Search, ad extensions and mobile advertising. However, Lindgaard finds regular paid search ads to be the most successful for the company.

We have built up a team that’s really strong in the use of Bing, and this, combined with the good CPC and conversion rates we see, makes it a really powerful tool for us.

Niklas Lindgaard, Global Head of PPC at momondo

Even more potential in PPC

Photo of momondo workers playing at a foosball table during a Bing Blasts workshop.

“Bing Blasts” in the momondo office

Lindgaard is delighted with the results he has seen from Bing Ads but thinks there’s still more that can be done to get more value from paid search advertising. A key part of this is building a team of search marketing specialists that understand Bing and how to get the most from it.

“We have built up a team that’s really strong in the use of Bing, and this, combined with the good CPC and conversion rates we see, makes it a really powerful tool for us,” Lindgaard explains.

Momondo also runs Bing workshops at its offices — known internally as “Bing Blasts” — where the whole marketing team gets together to discuss how it can best use Bing to help grow the company.

Bing is also constantly striving to improve its user experience — both for searchers and advertisers using the Bing Ads user interface — in an effort to make the experience consistent with other search engines and increase high-quality reach and conversions. One possible new offering that the momondo team is keen to explore is the use of Bing Image Ads, which is a unique feature that has just been rolled out since the start of this year. “Spicing up the first results with some eye-catching pictures of exotic travel destinations will make it easier for our users to visualize themselves on holiday, and the momondo brand is very strong in Denmark so having the logo visible may help to give us a competitive edge.” After all, who doesn’t search for travel deals online just to imagine themselves abroad?

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