Dive Brief:

• TripAdvisor has partnered with GrubHub to integrate the food delivery site's extensive restaurant network into its desktop web, mobile web and mobile app experiences, according to a joint news release.
• The functionality will allow people browsing TripAdvisor for restaurant listings in the U.S. to order food from tens of thousands of GrubHub partner restaurants across 1,100 cities.
• TripAdvisor, on the whole, is scaling back its instant booking strategy in the face of strong competition from Google and Trivago, according to a report in Skift. Instead, the travel site might focus on its metasearch business — essentially aggregating external, third-party search options — for price comparison ads, a shift estimated to add 5% to total revenue growth, according to a Cowen and Co. research note cited by Skift.

Dive Insight:

The two news items are likely related, although TripAdvisor didn't formally announce the change-up to its instant booking strategy, which was picked up on by Skift's internal analysis of a small sample of hotel search options on the platform. Adding GrubHub as a partner would help bolster TripAdvisor's growing reliance on other networks for search results and bookings, and could help the travel site — one of the largest in the world — make progress toward a turnaround.  

Skift noted that TripAdvisor is additionally expected to overhaul and clean-up its site design in a way that might accommodate more metasearch business. 

The GrubHub deal is also another example of how more traditional marketers and old-school digital businesses are teaming up with third-party apps or startups to modernize their services and also create a larger network than either could manage alone. At one point, GrubHub was likely viewed as disruptive to TripAdvisor's business, so TripAdvisor is smart to partner with the popular food ordering brand rather than try to develop a similar offering that would take considerable time and resources to build out. Also, as the digital food ordering landscape grows increasingly crowded, GrubHub is likely more willing to partner to bolster its business. An example of just how tough the food ordering space has become is the news that Maple, a popular two-year-old service in NYC, suddenly shut down this week. 

Given some of digital's heavier headwinds, including as ad blocking software, consumer cynicism toward intrusive formats and even fraud, more budgets are being toward longer-lasting, durable partnerships that combine technology and marketing.