Five of the 10 analysts who asked questions on Expedia Group’s third-quarter call on 4 November raised AI: agents, Meta’s Muse assistant, Google’s AI Mode or OpenAI’s new advertising products, by our count from Benzinga’s automated transcript of the call.
Asked whether Expedia takes part in OpenAI’s advertising products, chief executive Ariane Gorin said: “Yes, we are participating.” She said the company is “being willing to maybe accept some returns that aren’t as high as more established products that are more optimized”.
Business Pill · Agentic Commerce
An evergreen Business Engineer explainer on agentic commerce: what changes when the shopper is an AI agent. It explains the general idea only and does not discuss Expedia.
The key insight: On Expedia’s third-quarter call, 5 of the 10 analysts who asked questions raised AI, by our count; the chief executive said Expedia is participating in OpenAI’s advertising products and that agent traffic is very small and either incremental or taken from other paid channels.
Bank of America’s Justin Post asked whether traffic from AI agents arrives in place of paid or direct traffic. Gorin said: “the agentic traffic is very small so far. We see it as high-quality traffic. We don’t see it as impacting the direct traffic. I think it’s either incremental or it’s taken from other paid channels.” She added that it is “so small that it’s hard to draw any conclusion”.
In her prepared remarks, Gorin said product, supply, servicing and loyalty “are core drivers for why two-thirds of our bookings come direct”. Expedia’s results release, covered in our earlier piece, showed its consumer segment adding $182 million of revenue while direct selling and marketing fell $4 million, by our arithmetic.
Left bar: the 10 analysts who asked questions on Expedia Group’s third-quarter 2026 earnings call on 4 November 2026, split by whether their questions raised AI, agents or AI platforms (5) or other topics (5), our count from Benzinga’s automated transcript. Right bar: chief executive Ariane Gorin said on the call that two-thirds of Expedia’s bookings come direct.
Muse, Google AI Mode and OpenAI
Gorin said: “This quarter we partnered with Google in AI mode”, and announced an integration with Meta’s Muse. Asked by J.P. Morgan’s Doug Anmuth what that integration does, she said “Muse is going to have access to our prices, our content, and the like to be able to recognize travelers and then send them to us — either complete the booking in Muse or send them directly to us”. She said she believed it was going live in the U.S. potentially during the call.
Evercore ISI’s Mark Mahaney asked whether the economics of these deals are settled. Gorin said: “The economics of the partnerships are being worked out.” She also said: “From the third-party data we’re seeing, we’re leading in citation share in the US.” She did not name the data provider.
Her summary of the channel: “agentic AI’s real strength is in discovery, but that when it comes to bookings, people still want to book with a trusted brand where they know that they’ll be taken care of if something goes wrong”.
The Agents Inside Expedia
Gorin gave three operating figures for Expedia’s own agents. On Vrbo’s agentic voice service, she said “in the first two months it’s effectively resolving over 15% of inbound contacts, driving higher satisfaction scores at a lower cost”.
She said: “Our new autonomous hotel onboarding agent was built in less than a quarter by a small, focused team, while historically it would have taken multiple quarters and many more people.” Of a new Activity Agent that helps travelers build itineraries, she said “the people who are using that are twice as likely to book an activity within seven days of using it”.
On the partner side, she referred to “the agentic template that we just announced with Qantas”, one of Expedia’s three main B2B products alongside its Rapid API and travel agency platform.
As we read the call, the AI questions were about channels and costs: whether agents and AI platforms replace paid traffic, direct traffic or neither. Gorin’s answer placed agent traffic against paid channels, not direct bookings.
As we read the three operating figures, the measurable AI effects Expedia cited are inside its own operations, in servicing, onboarding and itinerary building, while the external agent channels have no figure attached.
Ariane Gorin, Expedia Group chief executive, Q3 2026 earnings call, 4 November 2026 (Benzinga automated transcript)
“I think it’s either incremental or it’s taken from other paid channels.”
Three Implications
FOR MARKETING Gorin said Expedia is participating in OpenAI’s advertising products and that it may accept lower returns than on more established products while it tests new ones.
FOR DISTRIBUTION Muse will have access to Expedia’s prices and content and can either complete a booking or send the traveler to Expedia, according to Gorin; she said the economics of such partnerships are being worked out.
FOR OPERATIONS Gorin said Vrbo’s agentic voice service resolved over 15% of inbound contacts in its first two months, and that a hotel onboarding agent was built in less than a quarter.
The framework says: “Your product stops being the thing companies buy and becomes the thing other systems assume exists.”
As we read it, the Muse integration Gorin described, in which an assistant reads Expedia’s prices and content, is one example of that pattern in travel. The framework does not discuss Expedia.
The quotes come from Benzinga’s automated transcript, which Benzinga says may contain errors. Gorin gave no figure for agent traffic, for spending on OpenAI’s advertising products or for the terms of the Muse and Google deals. Expedia’s 10-Q for the quarter was not on EDGAR at 22:36 UTC, so its risk factors are not reviewed here. The topic split of analyst questions is our count.
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Half of the analysts on Expedia’s call asked about AI, by our count. The chief executive said Expedia is participating in OpenAI’s advertising products, that agent traffic is very small and is either incremental or taken from other paid channels, and that two-thirds of bookings come direct.
A note on sourcing. Quotations are from Benzinga’s automated transcript of Expedia Group’s third-quarter 2026 earnings call on 4 November 2026, which may contain transcription errors. Segment figures are from Expedia’s results release filed with the SEC the same day; changes and the split of analyst questions are our arithmetic and our count.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
