Why Travel’s Biggest Brands Invisible in AI Answers | Behind the Numbers

Marcus Johnson (0:00)

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, verve.com. The biggest shifts in digital won't happen one at a time. 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. It's not too late.

Hey, gang, it's Monday, September 14th, Gadjo, Anna, and listeners. Welcome to Behind the Numbers, the EMARKETER Podcast made possible by Verve. I'm Marcus. Join me for today's conversation. We have two folks, senior analyst on the media team living in New York City. It's Gadjo Sevilla.

Gadjo Sevilla (0:59)

Hi, everybody. Happy to be here.

Marcus Johnson (1:01)

Hello, hello. And we're also joined by a special guest based in the UK, a vice president of Global Brand Partnerships at Verve, Anna Slater joins the show.

Anna Slater (1:10)

Thanks, Marcus. It's great to be here.

Marcus Johnson (1:12)

Welcome, welcome. Anytime we have a special guest on, we start with a speed intro. Two questions 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?

Anna Slater (1:28)

Good question. Have you ever seen that episode of Friends where people don't know what Chandler's job is? That's going to be me right now because none of my friends and family know what I do. So this is a good learning curve for them, right?

Marcus Johnson (1:38)

A transposter. You think that's what Rachel guesses?

Gadjo Sevilla (1:41)

Yeah, that's right.

Anna Slater (1:44)

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. And my job specifically here is to help evangelize that message to brands directly.

Marcus Johnson (2:00)

Very nice. Second question goes to you both, Anna, first, what's the best thing you've read, watched or listened to recently?

Anna Slater (2:05)

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 gender disparity in data. And it was absolutely fascinating and I would implore anyone to read it.

Marcus Johnson (2:20)

Very nice. Who's it by?

Anna Slater (2:22)

Carolina Criado Perez, if I'm pronouncing that right, but yes.

Gadjo Sevilla (2:26)

All right.

Marcus Johnson (2:26)

I'm going hunting. Gadjo, how about you?

Gadjo Sevilla (2:29)

So it's not new, but I've been re-watching the show Halt and Catch Fire. It's about the computer industry, so tracing the time before when the IBM PC came out, all the copycats, all the way to the start of the Internet. It's a drama, but it's also very well-written and it has a lot of Easter eggs from possibly companies and personalities you may know. So I found that quite riveting.

Marcus Johnson (2:57)

Even when he's not working, he's still working, folks. He's out here.

What channel is that on? What streaming service?

Gadjo Sevilla (3:05)

It was on AMC, but I think you can find it. It's a few years old, so it should be out there.

Marcus Johnson (3:11)

A few things to hunt for. Very nice. Well, they are two guests for today. But today we are talking about why are Travel's biggest brands invisible in AI answers?

EMARKETER Senior Editor Lisa Haas notes that nearly two-thirds of adult travelers under 45 would use AI for travel recommendations on their next trip. Let's go on to Simon Kutcher's Travel Trends 2026 report. I think just under half of GenX, about 30% of boomers as well. So a fair amount of those demographics too. But Anna, you have some new research tracking lots of real AI trip planning conversations. Give us one of the headline findings from this research.

Anna Slater (3:58)

So just to sort of maybe take a step back, what Verve has been able to do is analyse quite a significant number of AI conversations.

So, and specifically around travel. What we actually found within that subset 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 of those 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. So just to be super clear, it wasn't a holistic view of everyone in the travel space, but it was looking at obviously the biggest and the brightest. Yeah, exactly that. And actually four in five of those brands are not showing up at all. So it's an amazing stat, 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. But unfortunately, what we're seeing is these largest brands are not actually having a voice straight away, which is fascinating.