Priceline is deploying its AI agent Penny inside Snapchat ads as airfares climb ahead of the holiday season, Marketing Dive reported.
Users opening the ephemeral messaging app will receive a direct message from the travel site. The integration marks the first time a travel brand has utilized Snapchat’s AI Sponsored Snaps format.
Average domestic round-trip airfare for Thanksgiving rose 20% year over year as of late October, according to Hotel Dive data cited by Marketing Dive. Higher fuel costs and stubborn inflation are driving up travel expenses for consumers.
Travelers are leaning on personal AI agents to map out itineraries and search for deals as budgets tighten. Priceline rebuilt Penny in June to incorporate Anthropic’s Claude models, upgrading the assistant to handle complex queries and surface real-time pricing comparisons.
Details shared with Penny inside Snapchat transfer directly over to user conversations on Priceline’s main platform. Users can brainstorm destinations, outline itineraries, and find accommodations within the chat interface before jumping to the booking site.
Priceline reports that Penny converts users at approximately twice the rate of non-Penny users. The company is leaning on the campaign to drive adoption for the conversational assistant while positioning itself as a social-first brand.
Snapchat introduced AI Sponsored Snaps in April to let advertisers embed proprietary chatbots within its chat inbox interface. Standard Sponsored Snaps drive about 22% more conversions and 20% lower cost per action compared to other inventory on the platform.
While advertising revenue growth remains below our ambitions, advertisers are seeing the benefits of our performance improvements, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said in prepared remarks ahead of the company’s third-quarter earnings. Our focus now is to turn these improvements into broader adoption, more meaningful share of advertiser budgets and more durable growth.
