Despegar operates in 19 countries in the region, accompanying Latin Americans from the moment they dream of traveling until they share their memories. With the purpose of creating experiences so that travel enriches people's lives and transforms the shopping experience, it has developed alternative payment methods and financing, democratizing access to consumption and bringing Latin Americans closer to their next travel experience.

‍

How Topsort will streamline and uplift Despegar’s existing stack

‍

Topsort’s Approach

Our approach is a full-service offering, meaning we will fully support Despegar in implementing the platform, train the sales team, monitor performance and help scale the platform. 

Managed vs. Self-Service flows‍

‍We fully support managed service flow where Despegar’s team will create campaigns on behalf of their clients. Our self-service flow allows Despegar’s clients to easily create campaigns, monitor and optimize performance. 

Modularity

Topsort is the only one on the market with a modular API-first approach, meaning that Despegar can either take pieces of our platform and integrate them into their own stack, or have the full ad platform integrated. 

Ease of Use

Topsort’s platform was created with ease of use and transparency in mind. Average Topsort integration takes ~3 weeks, most of our clients integrate faster, and some of our clients integrate in just a few days. 

Extensive Experience

Our global experience with clients across multiple industries set us apart from the competition. Not only do we simplify integration, scale your ad business and improve processes, we also utilize our knowledge to introduce improvements and new functionality to grow your ad business and increase your market share. 

‍“We are confident that Topsort’s leading advertising technology will help Despegar achieve its mission to create the best travel experiences and enrich people's lives.” Emília Martinez, Sr Product Manager Media Solutions of Desapegar.

‍

Topsort’s Decision Engine: High-Level Overview

Topsort will layer on top of Despegar’s organic sort. Our platform does not require cookies and cannot be blocked by any ad blockers. Ads will not disrupt natural traveler experience and will look like a part of the listings. 

‍

Despegar has full control over ad placements, relevance, rank and any other ad logic. 

‍

With Topsort’s Sponsored Listings, hotels will be able to create campaigns, bid for destinations, dates, optimize and run reports, etc. Despegar has full control over where ads are shown.

Topsort’s decision engine is agnostic to auction types, it supports first and second price auctions as well as CPC, CPM, and CPA based bidding. Our system default as well as our recommended setting is CPC for sponsored listings and CPM for sponsored display, which is also on par with industry best practices.

Sponsored listings can be placed on any part of the website as long as there’s an organic list of hotels.

‍

Product Overview: Flights Listings 

Similar to Sponsored Listings, airlines will be able to create campaigns, bid for destinations, optimize and run reports, etc. Despegar has full control over where ads are shown.

Despegar will have full visibility into advertisers’ performance, ROAS, any other Despegar-specific metrics. We are the only true modular platform, meaning every part of our platform can be separated and integrated as a standalone feature (e.g. campaigns only, or reporting and auctions only), as well as a full platform integration. 

We are the only true programmatic auto bidding platform offered in a 3rd party state that is real-time bidding. Most platforms’ auto bidding is actually just an interface of “autobid'' where the bid analysis is done by ad analysts, while our system does real-time bidding programmatically every 5 minutes. Michael Ostrovsky who is the Chief Scientist at Topsort and also Professor at Stanford Business School wrote the industry benchmark paper on Second Price Auctions that shifted the industry to second price auctions. Topsort’s standard of Autobidding is a direct democratized result of what Google, Meta, and Amazon have to offer instead of an automated agency flow. We are able to perform autobidding and deliver both high ROAS and high CPC for a long-tail, fragmented platform in real-time. 

‍

Integration Requirements

‍

To integrate Topsort there are 3 pieces needed: Catalog, Events, Auctions. For each we have both pre-built libraries or API integration methods. Based on the level of customization and the detailed requests, the integration time can be as fast as half of a day to launch a quick test with out of the box settings, or 2-3 weeks to do a more customized and careful API-based rollout. 

Overall ramp is <1 month you should see a very successful launch with economics of pricing ramped up - where the key focus from Topsort side is technical and data science. During this time we recommend at least weekly calls as well as using our team chats to stay very in sync. After the launch the focus is more commercial and data science. The initial 6 months to even 12 months should still be full of strong and steady revenue growth week to week. 

In general, think of Topsort as your best partner in helping you build a world-class monetization program that is constantly delivering better results and there as you need. We have different best practices and strategic focus based on the stage of the ad initiative and needs you have. To quote the words of GM Monetization at Poshmark “Topsort is the gift that keeps on giving, every new ML model they deploy gives us 20% more growth every other week.”

‍

Here is a detailed RACI chart on the high-level milestone breakdowns. Although Topsort support is also continuous and truly nimble and flexible to your needs.

For team mix, we recommend the following: 

• 1 project lead that sets the strategy and roadmap on the ad development to work with us on setting the timeline, commercial goals, and strategy of this initiative, and stay very in sync with Topsort on the high-level growth plans of the project. 
• 2 developers for 1-2 sprints for an API-based integration. Given the testing cycle, we would recommend a full 2 sprint to allow buffer space and ample testing time. 
• 2 commercial team members to partake in Topsort product training and be the evangelists on how to leverage Topsort to be more effective in growing your ad business. 

‍

As you hit the initial ad milestones, team size tends to grow with business analysts (as there is more data and insights at this point) as well as developer headcounts as companies might want to add customization features to the roadmap and start iterating on their ad platforms. Most companies that work with Topsort see a 10x or even as high as 30x first-year ad revenue growth.

‍

Key clarifications and recommendations for Despegar:

1. Catalog Integration:

Importance: Recommended for improved performance and conversion tracking.

Data points: Categories, prices, availability, custom quality scores.

Possible Alternative: Lodging ID (for hotels, flight ID for flights) with additional details like quoted price and check-in/check-out dates in the auction API context. This approach requires extensive scoping with Despegar’s Team.

‍

2. Attribution:

Topsort’s responsibility: Determining ad conversions through anonymous User ID/Hotel ID mapping.

Data required: anonymous User IDs, SKUs (or lodging IDs with additional details).

‍

3. Search Filtering:

Recommendation: Despegar to own filtering based on campaign criteria (start/end dates, stay restrictions, prices, # of pax, etc.).

Data required: Details about eligible flights/lodgings for promotion in a specific search.

‍

4. Inventory and SKUs:

Challenge: Large number of SKUs (Hotel IDs) due to date variations.

Recommendation: Use lodging ID as the SKU and pass additional details like check-in dates in the auction API context.

‍

6. Campaign Management & Budgets:

Topsort’s role: Budgeting, pacing, auctions (for HSL/FSL), and reporting.

Despegar’s responsibility: Filtering, asset management, and localization.

Recommendation: Utilize Topsort’s reporting and campaign management features with potential customization by Despegar to fulfill business development needs.

‍

7. Multi-Channel Campaigns:

Complexity: Managing data separation, different inventories, and campaigns across channels and partners.

Recommendation: Discuss this further with Topsort to understand experience and recommendations for handling this complexity.