Those of us who make our livelihoods from advertising should rank higher than the average person if measured on a scale rating ones awareness of advertising. We should also rate higher than others if a similar scale existed tracking a person’s understanding of the relationship between advertising and not just its role in monetization but the interplay between specific ads and the variables impacting their value. For us to succeed it helps us to understand what inventory might work for what ad, which placements make sense for the type of ad being run. In other words, all of these calculations let us spend time focusing our energies on spots that have the potential to make us money. We don’t sit around, for example, and think up ways to get Google to place our link on their homepage, at least recently that is.
As performance marketers, we have learned and intuited a sense of what makes sense and what doesn’t. We spend a lot of time thinking about what would work where and looking for new opportunities, but on the whole our income doesn’t depend on our ability to make sense of inventory, i.e., why some should work and some should fail, why some scale and some limp along. Part of the reason we don’t think about is that generally these patterns take an extended period of time to play out. We might not have predicted just how large Facebook’s audience would become, but that its ads ecosystem offers a unique opportunity, doesn’t surprise us. Almost everyone knew that Google had something to it, even during the early days of AdWords when the model operated on an effective CPM as opposed to CPC. We understand too why a business based off funny viral content might see some big traffic, but would not get us excited about its long-term prospects.
From an advertising perspective, the best type of ads are those that users want to see. The Super Bowl comes to mind there. Ads in some magazines, like bridal magazines operate the same. Performance-based marketing ads don’t often fall into that category, but such a small percentage of ad impressions do. The same, too, holds true for the content. If either are forced, it might work, but you will face an uphill battle with regards to building a truly long-term business. And, as performance-based marketers, we deal with our fair share of criticism. Even as a writer covering performance-based marketing, I’ve dished out my fair share of criticism on the space, so it seems only fair to pick on someone who is not us. In this case, the company comes from the world of big business – brand dollars and big partnerships. It’s one of the ideas that seems like it should work, until you actually put yourself in the place of the user. But, that’s the beauty of trying to make money; there is often a thick-headedness that says push forward and prove that it could work. That’s bad enough as-is, but when you have money invested in your company, each million can only multiple the pressure. Such we surmise, fits a company who you might have seen but whose name you might have ignored – Sojern. It’s only fitting that a company focused on travelers would have a name that when spelled correctly means trip.
Sojern has put together quite a few assets that we as performance marketers wouldn’t mind having access to, chief among them, their inventory. It’s not quite as good as the post transaction inventory that Webloyalty and the like has, but Sojern feels like they somehow got a partial equivalent to Google’s homepage, namely off-limits inventory. Their inventory consists of what was previously unused – below the boarding pass. It’s not on all airlines, only some, and given the abysmal aviation landscape it seems reasonable that airlines would give it a try. If they could get an extra dollar or two per passenger why not try. Here’s how Sojern touts the opportunity on their site:
Now you’re going places
Working with airlines, Sojern brings customized, destination-oriented content to travelers throughout their trip. Along the way, we create rich opportunities for advertisers to connect with customers in powerful ways.
It starts with a boarding pass
Every day, businesses are discovering new ways of using the boarding pass to build stronger links to travelers…promoting special events and offers that match each passenger’s itinerary and preferences. And that’s only the beginning.
This same information could be used to customize more travel communications like airline confirmation emails and self-serve check-in kiosks. For travelers who opt in, messages could be programmed to reach those who prefer classical music over bluegrass, or Italian food versus Sushi.
Suddenly, the opportunities are as limitless as the big blue sky.
What does that mean in reality? This:
I can’t recall when I first started seeing their "destination-oriented content" appearing, but it’s not new. The biggest surprise is that it’s still showing. Granted, I haven’t done a full test, and I’ll have to see if the ads show on less commercial destinations, but the above is a boarding pass for Las Vegas, and if this is the best of what’s there, it has yet to reach an inspiring level. Perhaps worst of all, it’s an idea that flies counter to current convention. It uses a very performance-marketing like tactic that forces the less savvy and more hurried user to print out all this extra information. And, while the weather can help, the only people that benefit here is everyone but the user, e.g. the paper companies and ink manufacturers. Do you really need a two-page boarding pass with the weather and sponsored links that you can’t click in your hand?
Naturally, you don’t have to print out the boarding pass with the crap, er, "content," but you have to scroll to the bottom and look for the non-highlighted link:
Is Sojern the online equivalent of too big to fail? in other words, is it too good of an idea that investors will keep throwing money at? Have they paid for the inventory upfront and the lack of quality comes from a higher stakes version of arbitrage? If not, presumably the product doesn’t produce a meaningful bump in the bottom line of the airlines, and they are such gigantic institutions that perhaps they simply overlook its existence. This is where I hope I’m wrong, that I’m just an overly sensitive consumer and ad guy that scores way to high on those imaginary indices. If not, I would hope from an investor’s standpoint that the team doesn’t just have the impressive credentials to make the deals (which they obviously do) but that they also have the scrappiness of the performance marketing space, that much clichéd "fail fast" mentality. You have to hope that they aren’t trying to continually convince themselves of why it’s a good idea, and that’s something we all must ask ourselves at some point. If the answer is yes, it can work; just don’t get too comfortable.
top tier board; great management team.
http://www.sojern.com/about/board
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