Justin Urich at Nearsight published a study recently that caught my attention. He analyzed 541 vacation rental companies to see how many are actually running Facebook and Instagram ads. What he found was interesting:
- 63% of companies were not running any Facebook or Instagram ads at all.
- Only 37% of property managers had active campaigns
- Of the companies that were advertising, most were running 5 or fewer ads.
That stood out to me, considering that 71% of American adults use Facebook and 50% use Instagram.
The goal is not to replace Airbnb or Vrbo
To be clear, I don’t think property managers should be trying to out-market Airbnb or Vrbo. That’ll never happen. Those platforms are still going to drive the bulk of bookings for most operators.
But I think a lot of people frame this conversation the wrong way. The goal of paid marketing isn’t to completely replace OTA demand. The goal is to add additional demand on top of it.
If your portfolio would have landed at 60% occupancy on Airbnb traffic alone, and paid ads help push that to 70%, that can really change the profitability of the business. Even a handful of incremental bookings each month can matter if the return is there.
Why this matters
That is why paid ads are measured through ROAS (return on ad spend). In a simple example, lets say you have a nice property that books for $500/night and you decide to spend $20/day on ads. For the first 19 days, you don’t get a single booking outside of your normal Airbnb/Vrbo demand, and it feels like you’re lighting money on fire. Then, on day 20, your ads deliver a 4 night direct booking for $2,000. So you spent $400 on ads to gain $2,000 in revenue. That’s a 5x return. You don’t need that to happen at a massive scale for it to be worth paying attention to.
That is why Nearsight’s data feels useful. Because the biggest returns usually come from doing things that most other people aren’t doing. In that way, the fact that 63% of management companies are not advertising is encouraging. It tells us that most operators are underestimating a powerful ad channel.
The broader advantage
One practical note: Facebook’s “Ad Library” is public. You can look up companies like Wander (their team is excellent at running ads) and see exactly what kind of ads are working right now. If you’re curious about what this looks like in the real world, that’s a good place to start.
And there’s another downstream benefit here too. The vacation rental companies that are good at running ads also have an edge when it comes to attracting owners (owners love seeing the efforts of getting direct bookings because it validates you’re out there working on their behalf). Maybe that’s why Wander manages 1k+ properties and grew 14x YoY in 2025 🤔
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