Campaign Overview

Advertiser: TripAdvisor (TripGo.com)

Placement: Conversational AI Platforms Campaign

Period: Q1 2025

Markets Targeted: Global travelers & trip planners

TL;DR

TripAdvisor used Thrad to reach travelers at the exact moment they were planning trips inside AI assistants, turning what would have been a missed touchpoint into a direct acquisition channel for TripGo.com, their all-in-one trip planning product.

1. Context & Objectives

TripAdvisor has long been the go-to destination for travel discovery, but traveler behavior is shifting. A growing share of people now open an AI assistant before they open a browser. They ask things like "plan me a 7-day itinerary through Japan" or "what's the best time to visit Lisbon and where should I stay?" and they expect a full answer, right there, without clicking anywhere.

TripGo.com was built precisely for this kind of traveler: someone who wants to plan an entire trip end-to-end, from flights and hotels to local transport, currency, language tips, and day-by-day itineraries, all in one place. The challenge was that the moment this traveler was most engaged, mid-conversation with an AI and actively planning, TripAdvisor was invisible.

Thrad gave them a way in.

The campaign objective was straightforward: show up in the moments when users are deepest into trip planning mode inside AI platforms, and introduce TripGo as the natural next step to bring their itinerary to life.

2. Audience & Targeting

The target audience wasn't defined by demographics alone, it was defined by intent. Thrad identified users who were actively engaged in trip-planning conversations: building itineraries, asking for hotel recommendations, comparing destinations, or looking up visa requirements and local currency.

These are high-value moments. Someone asking an AI "what are the must-sees in Marrakech for a 5-day trip" isn't browsing casually, they're in planning mode, likely with a trip on the horizon. That's exactly where TripGo belongs in the conversation.

Thrad matched TripGo placements to these intent signals programmatically, across AI platforms where this behavior was most concentrated, with no manual publisher selection and no guesswork.

3. Solution & Execution

A. The Core Insight

Travel planning is one of the most natural use cases for conversational AI. Users don't just ask one question, they go deep. A single session might cover destination research, accommodation options, transport logistics, language basics, exchange rates, and a day-by-day schedule. It's an extended, high-engagement conversation, and it maps almost perfectly to what TripGo.com does.

Thrad identified this overlap and built the campaign around it: surface TripGo not as an interruption, but as a useful next step at the right moment in the planning journey.

B. Contextual Triggering

Ads were activated when users engaged with trip-planning queries, covering itinerary requests, accommodation searches, destination comparisons, and practical travel questions around currency, language, or local transport. The creative was generated dynamically to reflect the specific context of each conversation, making TripGo feel like a natural recommendation rather than a standard display ad.

For example, a user mid-way through planning a Southeast Asia backpacking route might see TripGo introduced as the tool to organize everything they had just discussed, hotels, legs of the journey, budget, into one shareable and actionable plan.

C. User Flow

An in-chat card surfaces within the AI response at a relevant moment in the planning conversation. A single tap opens TripGo.com with context carried over where possible, landing the user directly in a planning flow rather than a homepage. The goal was to reduce the gap between "I've planned it in my head" and "I've actually booked it."

4. Why It Worked

The moment matched the product. TripGo isn't a brand awareness play, it's a utility. Reaching users while they're actively planning meant the ad landed when the product was most immediately relevant.

AI is where trip planning is moving. Travelers increasingly use AI assistants as their first stop, not Google or TripAdvisor's own homepage. Thrad allowed TripAdvisor to meet users where that behavior was already happening, rather than waiting for them to navigate back.

Conversational context made the creative feel native. Because Thrad generates ad creative contextually, the TripGo placement didn't interrupt the planning session, it extended it. Users weren't pulled out of the experience, they were pointed toward the logical next step.

One product, one clear action. TripGo's value proposition, plan your whole trip in one place, is easy to communicate in a single moment. The format fit the message.