Display & Retargeting at Scale

GetYourGuide is the world’s largest online marketplace for travel experiences: 30,500+ activities across 7,000+ destinations. I spent four years there as Senior Display Marketing Manager, running the entire display and retargeting portfolio across Google Display, Discovery, YouTube, and Criteo.

The challenge

Launch and validate a new retargeting partner (RTB House, a programmatic display network) inside a multi-million-euro display ecosystem, without stealing credit or sales from the channels that were already working, and with full attribution from day one.

What I did

• Designed the tracking architecture to integrate RTB House into GetYourGuide’s Markov Chain attribution model
• Set up GTM tags, audience segmentation, and product feeds
• Built performance dashboards in Looker connected to Databricks
• Managed the ramp-up from test to full scale across all markets

The result

Against the display portfolio’s existing channel benchmarks, the new channel delivered ROAS +34%, CPA -80%, and CTR +458%. Then I scaled it across every market.

Context that matters

This was not a small-account optimization. GetYourGuide’s display budget ran in the multi-million-euro range per month. The tracking ecosystem involved Databricks, Looker, GTM (client + server), GA4, and a custom Markov Chain attribution model built by the Media Science team. I was the primary point person for all analytical and technical requirements within the Display team.

More proof

• Developed a Placement Miner tool using search-engine APIs to find contextually relevant sites at scale
• Built an automated display-ad generation pipeline (1 location = 1 ad group, fully automated)
• Ran incrementality tests (blackout A/B) that proved a ~2.8x multiplier for Smart Display: the real, causal lift, not just the last click
• Managed Criteo across 15+ accounts spanning all major European markets and currencies

I also co-developed the ML bidding model that replaced our rule-based scripts. That’s a separate case →.

They hired me back

After I left full-time in May 2024, GetYourGuide brought me back as a freelancer for 1000+ hours of work no one else could do: building their entire Demand Gen channel from scratch (540+ audience segments, 358 ads, zero presence before), running creative tests that lifted CTR up to +67% while cutting CPC -57%, and migrating every display feed during a critical infrastructure change. (During my time on the team I held 3× Outstanding and 3× Great across seven review cycles.)

Companies don’t re-hire people at premium freelance rates unless the work is irreplaceable.

Why this matters for you

If you’re scaling paid spend and adding channels, the risk isn’t launching. It’s launching blind and quietly stealing sales from what already works. I integrate new channels into clean attribution first, so you can see what’s truly incremental before you pour budget into it. That’s the same approach I’d bring to your account.