Your Boarding Pass For an Advert

Posted by: Justin Bachman on July 15

Coming to a boarding pass near you: A free appetizer at the Hard Rock Café! The six big U.S. legacy carriers have a new source of advertising revenue, unveiled today on Delta flights to Las Vegas. In essence, your boarding pass will soon be a billboard, touting all sorts of destination businesses such as golf courses, hotels, clubs, restaurants and theme parks. Only the following areas — alcohol, tobacco, firearms, ammunition, fireworks, gambling, porn, airlines, politics, and religion — are off limits.

The startup behind the effort, Omaha-based Sojern, has struck five-year deals with American, Continental, Delta, Northwest, United, and US Airways to get advertisements on boarding passes. Delta will expand the effort to all domestic destinations over the next week, and the other five will move in soon. Sojern also will serve click and other online advertising around the various screens used in the online check-in process. Each airline will share revenue and holds a minority equity stake in the outfit, which launched with $16 million from two Silicon Valley venture capital firms. The first phase of the project will be for boarding passes issued via online check-in, estimated to be about 40% of the 700 million annual U.S. emplanements.

Granted, putting an ad, weather forecast or coupon on a boarding pass is no big deal – heck, for enough money these days you can plaster your kids’ kindergarten drawings on the side of any commercial jet. The mechanics of online advertising are relatively simple, and ads already cover airline paraphernalia the world over. (There is a small demo available here.) So you’re probably thinking, “Yeah, so what?” to this news.

But while the project is in its infancy and will likely remain a rudimentary system while all the kinks are worked out, the ad-targeting implications are pretty extraordinary. We forget how much the airlines know about us. They have data on the credit card relationships, the sums we spend, the cities we visit, the times we travel, the months we stay home. In fact, the airlines I fly regularly know far more about my finances, for example, than my relatives do. This data represent a gold mine. The airlines proclaim to guard it scrupulously, of course, but as their finances continue to deteriorate one could reasonably suspect that the siren song of easy cash will entice them to sell ever-increasing bits of information. Northwest’s vice president of distribution and e-commerce, Al Lenza, predicted in a July 14 conference call that airline check-in advertising would lead to “many millions of dollars for each airline.”

This new system means the airline can get an advertiser very close to your income level, travel schedules, and interests. “We will be able to allow that advertiser the dynamic capability to reach those segments … in real time,” in the words of Sojern CEO Gordon Whitten, a former VP at software company Intuit (INTU). And if the advertiser is willing to pony up, how close might the carrier move the two of us together? I, as the traveler, will get promotions relevant to my pending trip, the airline gets cash and the advertiser may get my money. It’s a win-win-win, assuming each of the three parties is satisfied with the arrangement. Whitten calls it “an interactive experience related to my travel.” The rubber shoe company Crocs has been one of the first adopters of the platform. (A Sojern board member is also on Crocs' board.) Darden Restaurants’ (DRI) Bahama Breeze chain is another.

This effort will do nothing to help slow the rush of new fees flooding over travelers, but it may put a few additional new shekels in the till. That could potentially stave off a fee hike here or there. The ever-amusing Minyanville site posed a snarky question on the subject, suggesting even more advertising aloft: “For more prurient types, why not slap an ad or two on the flight attendant's derriere, like those tasteful ones you see on Victoria's Secret sweatpants?"