There is a category of advertising that has quietly become one of the most significant growth stories in digital marketing. It doesn’t have a single agreed name. It doesn’t have a single agreed measurement standard. And depending on who you ask, it means something slightly different every time. What follows is a travel media network definition from the ground up — covering commerce media in travel, the retail media model it emerged from, and the role of travel advertising data in building campaigns that actually reflect how people travel. 

Commerce media. Retail media. Travel media networks. These terms are used interchangeably, used incorrectly, and used by vendors to describe products that have very little in common with each other beyond the fact that they all involve first-party data and advertising in the same sentence. 

This piece sets out to define them properly. What commerce media actually is. How retail media emerged from it. Why travel media networks are a specific and structurally distinct expression of the same idea. And why the version of travel media networks that currently dominates the market is failing to deliver on the promise that the category was built on. 

If you’re an advertiser, a media buyer or a brand trying to understand where travel advertising data fits into your strategy — and whether the travel media networks you’re being pitched are actually capable of what they claim — this is the piece that explains it from the ground up. 

What you’ll learn 

  • What commerce media is and why it has become one of the fastest-growing categories in digital advertising 
  • How retail media networks work — and why the retail media model doesn’t translate directly to travel 
  • What a travel media network is, who operates them, and how they work 
  • The structural limitations of closed, single-platform travel media networks 
  • What the next generation of travel media looks like — and what a Travel Audience Platform actually is 

 

What Is Commerce Media? A Definition 

Commerce media is the practice of using first-party transaction and behavioural data, generated through commercial activity, to power advertising that is more relevant, more targeted and more measurable than traditional digital advertising. 

The core idea is straightforward. Every time a consumer interacts with a commercial platform — searching for a product, browsing a catalogue, making a purchase, completing a booking — they generate data. That data reveals intent, preference, lifestyle and purchasing behaviour in ways that demographic targeting or third-party cookie-based advertising never could. Commerce media is the business of turning that data into a media asset: using it to build audiences, target campaigns and measure outcomes with a precision that was previously unavailable. 

Commerce media emerged as a serious category for three connected reasons. The decline of third-party cookies — the small tracking files that allowed advertisers to follow people around the internet — forced advertisers to find alternative signals. Privacy regulation pushed brands toward consented, first-party data models. And the platforms sitting on the richest transaction data — retailers, OTAs, airlines, financial services companies — realised that their data was worth more as a media product than as an internal resource. 

The result is a category that is now growing faster than almost any other segment of digital advertising. Commerce media spend is projected to reach $163 billion globally by 2027. Every major transaction platform is now, to some degree, also a media business. 

What Is a Retail Media Network? 

Retail media is commerce media applied to the retail category. It is the most mature and best-understood expression of the model. 

A retail media network is the advertising infrastructure built by a retailer on top of its first-party customer and transaction data. Amazon Advertising is the most prominent example — a business that generated an estimated $56 billion in ad revenue in 2024, built on the purchasing behaviour of hundreds of millions of Amazon customers. Walmart Connect, Tesco Media and Insight, Kroger Precision Marketing and hundreds of others follow the same basic model: the retailer owns the shelf, owns the customer relationship, and now monetises both through advertising. 

Retail media works at scale because retail has scale concentration. Amazon accounts for nearly 40% of all US e-commerce. In the UK, Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Asda together account for the majority of grocery spend. When one platform controls a dominant share of category transactions, it controls a dominant share of category data — and that data has genuine value to the brands selling through those platforms. The trade-off of buying into a closed, proprietary network is worth making when the network in question touches nearly half of all relevant consumer spending. 

There are now more than 200 retail media networks globally. The category has fragmented significantly as every retailer of sufficient scale has decided their transaction data is a media asset. But the fundamental model — one platform, one data set, closed measurement — remains consistent across all of them. 

What Is a Travel Media Network? 

A travel media network is commerce media applied to the travel category. It uses first-party data generated through travel commerce — bookings, searches, metasearch comparisons, loyalty programmes — to build advertising audiences and power campaigns for travel and non-travel brands. 

The category emerged from the same conditions that drove retail media: the decline of third-party targeting, the rise of privacy-first data models, and the realisation among travel platforms that their booking and behavioural data was commercially underutilised. Airlines, OTAs, metasearch platforms and hotel groups each sit on rich, consented, first-party data about travellers — data that reveals not just where people are going but who they are, how they spend, and what they’re likely to do next. 

The promise of travel media networks is significant. Travel is a high-intent category. The data it generates is among the richest lifestyle and purchasing signal available in digital advertising. And unlike retail, where the journey often ends at the point of purchase, the travel journey extends across months of aspiration, research, decision-making and post-trip behaviour — creating a far longer and more data-rich engagement window than almost any other consumer category. 

But here is where travel media networks diverge fundamentally from their retail media counterparts — and where the category has so far failed to deliver on its promise. 

Types of Travel Media Networks: Airlines, OTAs, Metasearch Platforms and Hotel Groups 

The travel media network landscape is defined by four main archetypes, each with different data assets, different inventory, and different limitations. 

Airline media networks 

Airline media networks are built on the first-party data of a carrier’s registered customers and frequent flyers. They offer genuine depth — booking history, route preference, spend tier, loyalty status — but only for that airline’s own passengers. They have almost no visibility into the travel behaviour of people who don’t fly with them, book through them, or hold their loyalty card. Their media inventory typically spans the airline’s owned channels: the website, the app, in-flight entertainment, email, and increasingly off-site programmatic extensions. 

OTA-owned travel media networks 

OTA-owned travel media networks are built on the booking and browsing data of the world’s largest travel marketplaces. They offer access to travellers who are actively searching and booking through their platforms — high-intent, in-market audiences with demonstrable purchase behaviour. Their limitations mirror those of retail media: if a traveller doesn’t pass through their platform, they don’t exist within the data set. Given that the largest OTA in the world — Booking.com — accounts for just over 10% of global travel gross bookings, the vast majority of the travel journey is invisible to any single OTA-owned network. 

Travel metasearch platforms 

Travel metasearch platforms — the sites and tools where travellers compare prices and availability across multiple airlines, hotels and OTAs simultaneously — hold a uniquely valuable and underappreciated data asset. They see the comparison behaviour that happens before a booking is made: who is actively shopping across carriers and pricing options, how price-sensitive they are, which routes and destinations they’re considering. This is intent data at its most commercially meaningful. Unlike an OTA that sees the completed booking, a metasearch platform sees the decision in progress — often the richest signal of all for reaching travellers at the exact moment they’re choosing. 

Hotel group media networks 

Hotel group media networks offer on-property data, loyalty programme signals and direct booking behaviour. They are valuable for understanding the guest relationship and post-booking engagement but have very limited reach into the pre-booking phases where purchase intent actually forms. They are also, by definition, brand-specific — a hotel group’s media network tells you about its own guests, not about the broader universe of travellers. 

How Travel Media Networks Work: Data, Inventory and Buying Models 

Travel media networks operate through three core components: the data layer, the inventory layer, and the buying model. 

The data layer 

The data layer is the foundation. First-party data — data collected directly from real travellers with their consent, rather than purchased from a third party — including booking records, loyalty profiles, search behaviour, browsing history and metasearch comparisons, is collected, processed and modelled into audience segments. These segments might describe travellers by destination type, booking frequency, spend tier, travel party composition, or any number of other behavioural and demographic attributes. The quality of a travel media network’s data layer determines the quality of everything built on top of it. 

The inventory layer 

The inventory layer is where the advertising actually runs. This might be owned and operated inventory — the network’s own website, app, email or in-destination touchpoints — or extended inventory activated across third-party environments. The distinction between on-network and off-network inventory matters significantly for reach, brand safety and measurement. 

The buying model 

The buying model determines how advertisers access the network. Most travel media networks offer a combination of managed service — where the network’s team plans and executes the campaign on the advertiser’s behalf — and programmatic access for more sophisticated buyers. Measurement frameworks vary considerably, from simple click-through attribution to incrementality testing — measuring the actual additional sales driven by advertising above what would have happened anyway — and secure data collaboration environments. 

The Limitations of Closed Travel Media Networks 

The structural problem with travel media networks as they currently exist is the same problem that afflicts the travel category more broadly: fragmentation. 

In retail media, a closed network model is tolerable — even sensible — when one platform controls a dominant share of category transactions. The data is deep enough and the reach is broad enough to justify the trade-off of working within a proprietary system. 

In travel, no such concentration exists. The largest OTA in the world accounts for just over 10% of global travel gross bookings. A single airline’s registered customer base represents a fraction of the total traveller universe. A hotel network sees only guests who have stayed within its own properties. Each of these networks holds a genuine piece of the puzzle. None of them holds enough of it to tell the full story. 

The consequence for advertisers is a choice between two bad options. Buy into one closed network and accept that you are reaching a fragment of the audience you actually want. Or buy into multiple networks — airline, OTA, metasearch, hotel — and spend more time managing relationships, reconciling measurement frameworks and resolving data conflicts than you do actually running campaigns. Neither approach delivers the full-journey audience intelligence that travel advertising data, properly aggregated, is capable of producing. 

There is also a deeper problem with closed travel media networks that rarely gets discussed openly. When a network’s data, inventory and measurement are all proprietary, the advertiser has no independent way to validate what they’re being told. Reach figures, attribution models and performance reports are self-certified. The conflict of interest is structural — the network has every incentive to present its own data in the most favourable light, and the advertiser has limited ability to interrogate it. 

What the Next Generation of Travel Media Networks Looks Like 

The next generation of travel media networks is not a bigger version of what already exists. It is a fundamentally different architecture. 

It starts with aggregation. Instead of one airline’s data or one OTA’s bookings, the data layer draws from across the full travel ecosystem — airlines, OTAs, travel metasearch platforms and hotel groups. The result is an audience picture that actually reflects how travel works: fragmented across providers, extended across time, and rich with signals that no single platform can generate on its own. 

It is built on openness. Rather than forcing advertisers into a proprietary buying environment, the next generation of travel media activates audiences across social, search, programmatic and connected TV without adding new systems or new vendor relationships to manage. It works with the tools advertisers already use, not against them. 

It is platform-agnostic by design. The audience is built from travel intelligence. Where that audience is activated — which platform, which channel, which format — is determined by where the customer actually is, not by the boundaries of any single network’s inventory. 

And it is held to a higher standard of measurement. Secure data collaboration environments, incrementality testing and transparent reporting that can be independently validated — not self-certified performance metrics from a network with a conflict of interest in the outcome. 

Navigator is the Travel Audience Platform for Commerce Media built on this architecture. Aggregating over 2 billion first-party data points from a 20+ partner network spanning airlines, OTAs, travel metasearch platforms and hotel groups. Activating audiences across every platform the customer uses. Measuring outcomes in a way that answers the questions advertisers are actually asking. Open and built for the full arc of the travel journey — from the first spark of inspiration to the loyalty touchpoint after the bags are unpacked. 

Travel gave us our depth. The journey gives us our direction. 

 

Key takeaways 

  • Commerce media is the use of first-party transaction data to power more relevant, measurable advertising. Retail media and travel media networks are both expressions of this model. 
  • Retail media works because retail has scale concentration. A small number of platforms control the majority of category transactions, making closed network models commercially viable. 
  • Travel media networks are structurally different. No single platform owns more than a fraction of global travel bookings. Closed, single-platform networks cannot reflect the full travel journey. 
  • The travel media network landscape spans airlines, OTAs, metasearch platforms and hotel groups — each with valuable data, none with sufficient reach on their own. 
  • The next generation of travel media is built on aggregation, openness and platform-agnostic activation. It starts with the customer and follows them across the journey. 
  • Navigator is the Travel Audience Platform for Commerce Media built to deliver this: 2 billion+ first-party data points, 20+ partners, activated wherever the customer is. 

 

Frequently Asked Questions 

What is commerce media? 

Commerce media is the practice of using first-party data — data collected directly from real customers with their consent — generated through commercial transactions to build advertising audiences and power campaigns that are more targeted and measurable than traditional digital advertising. It encompasses retail media networks, travel media networks, financial services media and any other category where transaction data is used as a media asset. 

What is a retail media network? 

A retail media network is the advertising infrastructure built by a retailer on top of its first-party customer and transaction data. Advertisers buy access to audiences defined by that retailer’s purchase and browsing data, across the retailer’s owned inventory and extended environments. Amazon Advertising is the largest and most well-known example. 

What is a travel media network? 

A travel media network is commerce media applied to the travel category. It uses first-party data generated through travel bookings, searches, metasearch comparisons and loyalty programmes to build advertising audiences for travel and non-travel brands. Travel media networks are operated by airlines, OTAs, metasearch platforms and hotel groups — each holding a different slice of the overall travel advertising data picture. 

Why are travel media networks more fragmented than retail media networks? 

Because the travel category has no equivalent to Amazon or Tesco. The largest OTA in the world accounts for just over 10% of global travel gross bookings. No single platform controls sufficient market share to make a closed, single-platform network commercially adequate for advertisers who want to reach travellers across the full journey. The result is a landscape of airlines, OTAs, metasearch platforms and hotel groups — each with valuable data and insufficient reach. 

How do travel media networks fit into a travel advertising strategy? 

Travel media networks should be used as part of a broader, aggregated Travel Audience Platform strategy — not as standalone data sources. A single airline network or OTA platform gives you a fragment of the travel journey. The most effective travel advertising strategies combine travel advertising data from multiple networks into a unified audience intelligence layer, then activate that intelligence wherever the customer is. That is what a Travel Audience Platform like Navigator is built to do. 

What is a Travel Audience Platform and how is it different from a travel media network? 

A Travel Audience Platform aggregates first-party data from across the full travel ecosystem — airlines, OTAs, travel metasearch platforms and hotel groups — into a single, unified audience intelligence layer. Unlike a closed travel media network tied to one carrier or one booking platform, a Travel Audience Platform activates audiences wherever the customer is, across social, search, programmatic and connected TV. It is open and built around the customer rather than the inventory of any single provider. Navigator is the leading Travel Audience Platform for Commerce Media. 

Who should use a travel media network? 

Both endemic travel brands — airlines, hotels, OTAs, cruise lines — and non-endemic advertisers benefit from travel media. For endemic brands, travel media networks provide access to high-intent, in-market audiences with demonstrated travel purchase behaviour. For non-endemic brands in automotive, financial services, retail and home categories, travel advertising data provides a powerful life-stage and intent signal that reveals high-value consumers at moments of significant purchasing activity — far beyond the travel category itself. 

 

Want to find out more about how Navigator’s Travel Audience Platform works? Get in touch. 

 

Sources: Phocuswright Global Travel Market Report 2024/2025 | Booking Holdings Annual Report 2024 | Amazon Advertising Revenue 2024 | Statista/eMarketer US e-commerce market share | GroupM This Year Next Year Global Forecast 2024 | Mimbi Retail Media Networks Global Index