Competitive Insights shows you how your performance compares to other advertisers in your market, helping you understand whether your bids and budgets are competitive, and where to focus to improve visibility.
What is Competitive Insights?
Competitive Insights is a benchmarking tool built into the platform. It surfaces market-level and advertiser-level data so you can see how your campaigns stack up against other properties advertising in the same destinations. Use it to inform decisions about bid adjustments, budget increases, and targeting changes.
Overview - an aggregated advertiser-level summary across all markets, with clear indicators highlighting areas of strong performance and opportunities that may require attention.
Market-level view - see how your property performs in a specific destination (e.g., Paris, New York, Bangkok) relative to the total advertiser market in that location. Helps you understand your share of the available advertising space.
Hotel-level view
Key metrics in Competitive Insights
CPC (Cost Per Click) - your average cost per click compared to the market average. If your CPC is below the market average, your bids likely aren't competitive enough to win prime placements.
ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) - your return on ad spend compared to the market. Lower-than-average may indicate a need to refine targeting or improve property listing conversion rates.
SOS (Share of Shelf) - your impressions as a percentage of total market impressions: Your Impressions ÷ Total Market Impressions × 100. A higher SOS means more visibility relative to competitors. A lower SOS signals an opportunity to increase your visibility.
Average Daily Spend - your average daily spend compared to other advertisers in your market. If you're significantly below the market average, your ads may not be competitive in high-demand windows.
How to access Competitive Insights
Click Competitive Insights in the left-hand navigation bar.
Select Market View to see data for a specific destination, or Advertiser View for your overall competitive position.
Use the filters to select the destination, date range, and account.
How to use the data
CPC below market average: Your bids might not be competitive enough to win in the auction, limiting impressions and visibility. Increase your base bid. Keep in mind that Share of Shelf improves when both your bid and average daily spend are competitive. A bid increase alone on a limited budget may exhaust funds faster without a meaningful gain in visibility. Review your budget alongside your bid.
CPC above market average: You are bidding competitively and winning auctions. This is not necessarily a problem. Cross-check against ROAS. If ROAS is strong, a higher CPC is acceptable. If ROAS is low despite a high CPC, clicks may not be converting. Review your Booking.com listing quality and targeting settings.
SOS below market average: Competitors are capturing more visibility in your market. You are winning a smaller share of total impressions. Check both CPC and Average Daily Spend against the market. Low SOS is typically driven by under-bidding, under-investing, or both. Align your budget with the average daily spend and review your base bid.
Average Daily Spend below market average: You are under-investing relative to competitors, which limits how many competitions you enter each day. Check if your budget is aligned with the market average in your campaign settings. Also, review targeting. Overly restrictive targeting reduces visibility regardless of budget.
ROAS below market average: Your campaigns are generating less revenue per dollar spent than other advertisers in the same market. Open the Advertiser Recommendations dashboard for campaign-specific alerts. Review your Booking.com listing. Post-click conversion (photos, rates, reviews) directly impacts ROAS. If Dynamic Bidding is enabled, ensure ROAS goal is set according to your business objectives.
Use Competitive Insights as a directional signal, not an absolute verdict. Context matters alongside the numbers. A lower SOS in a highly saturated market may still represent strong performance for your specific property type.
Need help?
Our team is here to help. Reach out via Live Chat 💬 in the platform, email us at booking.sponsoredlistings@koddi.com, or browse the Help Center for additional guides and resources.