Gray Line Worldwide operates in a uniquely complex paid-media environment. As a global brand with operations in dozens of cities, every market behaves differently -- competitive intensity, traveler intent, seasonality, currency, and creative all shift from one destination to the next. Travelers searching for a sightseeing tour in Las Vegas behave nothing like travelers planning an Iceland day trip from London.
Historically, this complexity made it difficult to scale paid media efficiently. Generic global campaigns underperformed, and city-specific efforts were difficult to manage at the network level. Meanwhile, advertising costs across the urban tour vertical continued to rise, and platforms like Google Things to Do (GTTD) were creating new opportunities for high-intent demand capture that required dedicated investment to take full advantage of.
TOMIS partnered with Gray Line Worldwide to build a geo-segmented paid media strategy that treated each destination as its own performance unit -- with campaign architecture, budget pacing, and creative tailored to local demand and traveler behavior.
On Google Ads, this meant building a portfolio of Performance Max campaigns for the brand's highest-priority markets, paired with structured in-market and out-of-market search campaigns to capture both planning-stage and arrival-stage intent. A dedicated branded search layer protected high-converting brand demand, while a Google Things to Do (GTTD) integration expanded reach across both U.S./Canada and EU search experiences.
On Meta, the team rebuilt the account around regional campaigns and tested creative against destination-specific audiences, scaling spend into ad sets that consistently increased direct bookings.
The shift to a segmented, performance-driven paid media strategy delivered immediate and compounding results across the 2025 calendar year.
On Google Ads, conversion value grew 132% year-over-year, with tracked conversions up 148%. Account-level ROAS climbed from 3.32x in 2024 to 5.08x in 2025 -- a 53% efficiency gain achieved while ad spend was simultaneously scaled up 51%. Scaling spend and improving efficiency at the same time is the hardest combination to achieve in paid media; Gray Line Worldwide did both, at global scale.
Performance Max became the engine of growth, delivering $4.85 of conversion value for every dollar spent across the year. Branded search delivered a 6.37x ROAS, protecting high-intent demand at industry-leading efficiency. The in-market and out-of-market campaign architecture allowed budget to follow demand across destinations like Montreal, New Orleans, Las Vegas, Orlando, Iceland, Munich, Rome, and Zurich -- without the cannibalization that typically plagues multi-market accounts.
The trajectory accelerated through the year. H2 2025 delivered a 6.22x ROAS, up from 3.73x in H2 2024 -- proving that the new account architecture continued to compound returns as the season progressed and learning data accumulated.
On Meta, spend was scaled aggressively to support new market expansion, and the brand drove 718 tracked purchases across the platform -- building a paid social foundation alongside the dominant Google Ads program.
Across all paid channels, Gray Line Worldwide grew total paid clicks by 118% year-over-year, capturing meaningfully more traveler attention at a lower effective cost per booking. Site-wide reservation revenue grew alongside the paid media gains, contributing to broader business momentum heading into 2026.
Together, these results positioned Gray Line Worldwide as a benchmark example of how a legacy global tour brand can use a modern, geo-segmented paid media strategy to scale efficiently across dozens of urban markets simultaneously.