Airbnb has spent four years reversing the marketing shift it became famous for during the Covid pandemic. I found this out recently as I dug into the company’s SEC filings, which documented each stage as it happened.
I analyzed every sales and marketing disclosure the company has filed since 2020, quarter by quarter, and lined them up against public statements. The filings tell a more complicated story than the public message.
Search engine marketing, a channel Airbnb had pushed to the margins of its strategy, began growing again in 2022. By 2023, the filings were laying out the exact dollar amount search marketing added each quarter. By the first quarter of 2025, it was rising in the same disclosure that showed campaign spending being cut. And this year, both quarterly filings attribute marketing growth to “paid growth initiatives,” with brand and performance marketing up 32% for the first half against revenue growth of 17%.
Prologue
In 2020, Air