Marriott Turns App and Hotel TVs Into Revenue Stream With New Ad Network

Brands like Visa and Gatorade have begun advertising across Marriott's many screens. Its booking app? Ads. Your hotel room TV? Ads. The Wi-Fi login page? More ads.

Marriott is turning its mobile app, websites, and hotel guestroom TVs into advertising real estate. On Thursday, it became the first major hotel group to launch a commerce media network, serving ads to guests and loyalty program members.

The world's largest hotel company began testing ad sales months ago with brands such as United Airlines, Uber, Visa, American Express's Resy, Amazon's Audible, and Starbucks.

Marriott is following United Airlines and retailers like Walmart and DoorDash in monetizing customer data with ad networks.

"If we scale the platform to the 1 million rooms we have in the U.S. and Canada, our scale might be equivalent to a top-10 network," said Peggy Roe, Marriott's chief customer officer.

Advertisers can place ads on Marriott's site and app, in the marketing emails Marriott sends to guests, and on Wi-Fi log-in pages at hotels. They can also reach Marriott customers as those customers search sites like Instagram.

In tests, Gatorade ran ads enco