TripAdvisor 2011 Annual Report Download - page 13

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Table of Contents
up to a one year term. For a discussion of these commercial arrangements, see “Note 9— Related Party Transactions ” in the notes to our
consolidated and combined financial statements.
Other Click-Based Advertisers
We have click-based advertising relationships with the vast majority of the leading online travel agencies globally as well as a variety of
travel suppliers pursuant to which these companies purchase traveler leads from us, generally on a CPC basis. These relationships are
strategically important to us and most can be terminated by the advertiser at will or on short notice.
Content-Related Partnerships
We have a content licensing program utilized by over 350 partners across the world, including hotel chains, online travel agents, tourist
boards, airlines and media sites. TripAdvisor also distributes its content through self-service HTML widgets, which are used on the websites of
hotels, restaurants, attractions and destination marketing organizations. These products, which are available at no cost in the TripAdvisor
Management Center, allow businesses and destinations to promote themselves by displaying their TripAdvisor ratings, reviews and awards.
TripAdvisor widgets are presently found on more than 50,000 unique domains. Partners benefit from our user-generated content, such as
reviews, ratings, photos and traveler forums. In addition we power review collection for a growing number of partners such as Accor Hotels and
Easytobook.com, enabling them to proactively collect reviews from their own customers post-stay in their own branded environment. We have
also developed mobile partnerships with carriers and mobile device manufacturers.
Syndication Partners
We also syndicate our click-based advertising to third-party websites. The largest such syndication relationship is with Yahoo! Travel
Guides, pursuant to which we provide “check rates” advertising on the Yahoo! Travel Guides’ hotel pages for a term of more than one year.
Marketing and Promotions
Our marketing programs are intended to build and maintain the value of our brands, promote consumer engagement and contributions,
drive qualified clicks to our partners and strategically position our brands in the market. Our long-term success depends on our continued ability
to maintain and increase the overall number of consumers flowing through our brand in a cost-effective manner, as well as our ability to attract
consumers who will share their own content from their trips. Our marketing channels include SEM and search engine optimization. We also
utilize customer relationship marketing in which we send relevant and engaging traveler communications to our members via email. We have a
robust global public relations program that yields placements on a constant basis in major print and online publications. We also use social media
channels including Facebook and Twitter to deepen customer engagement. We syndicate our content so that other sites can feature TripAdvisor
branding and content. Lastly, marketing and product development initiatives are closely tied. We are constantly creating helpful features and
functionality so that our consumers can discover more relevant travel and review content that they want to talk about and share with their friends.
Operations and Technology
We have assembled a team of more than 150 highly skilled software engineers, computer scientists, network engineers, and systems
engineers whose expertise spans a broad range of technical areas, including a wide variety of open source operating systems, databases,
languages, analytics, networking, scalable web architecture, operations, and warehousing technologies. We make significant investments in
product and feature development, data management and personalization technologies, scalable infrastructures, networking, data warehousing,
and search engine technologies. The TripAdvisor branded websites are powered primarily using Java programming language.
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