Thus spake Khosrowshahi

“We’re a big spender on search, but we’re also a big spendee,” Expedia Inc’s CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told analysts yesterday. ‘On tripadvisor, some of the revenue growth came from higher CPC prices that travel companies are spending.’

The revenue growth for Expedia’s advertising and media business came in at 73% higher than the first three months of 2007. And the organic growth rate was 50%. As a proportion of the Expedia first quarter pie, it accounted for 9% of worldwide revenue.

Enough of the percentages – in dollar terms that’s $200m revenue over the past four quarters.

And as Dara said, that’s’ high margin revenue’.

With more to come. “Advertising revenue on our transaction sites continues to gain traction. Later this month we will launch version2.0 of our travel ads in test markets, including the implementation of travel ads on hotels.com.”

It’s not just in the US. CFO Michael Adler had no reservation in revealing that ‘20 to 25%’ of ad/media revenues are coming from international markets. “And in respect of ads on our transaction sites, our European advertising business is starting to scale very quickly.”

Quicker, Dara added, that the growth in European traffic.

Expedia Inc is clearly committed to a global media model. It will be fascinating to watch this channel develop over the coming quarters. It’s almost as if Expedia is getting ready for any fall-out from the double-digit keyword inflation on Google...

Martin Cowen, chief writer, Travolution