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Advertising Soars New Heights...Or Lows
July 24, 2008

The beleaguered airline industry, eagerly searching for new ways to raise money (in addition to per-bag fees, fees for customer service, etc.), have now hit on something that may help keep at least some costs from being passed on to the customer:

Sojern Inc. of Omaha plans to announce that it has partnered with five airlines to offer online boarding passes that will be splashed with coupons, weather information and restaurant and event promotions for their destinations.

Seems like a nice idea on the face of it, but there is the oversaturation issue:

But some travelers -- who already feel nickel-and-dimed by new airline fees -- may be irked by seeing ads splashed on their boarding passes. Travelers already face a variety of come-ons during their flight. U.S. Airways, for example, sells advertising space on tray tables, while other airlines have experimented with ads on overhead bins and promotional messages on the ticket jackets handed to passengers when they check in at the airport.

I half expect to retrieve my luggage and find that the baggage handlers have plastered ads on it. (Uh oh; better not give them any ideas!)

This might not be a bad idea if the saturation issue can be kept to a minimum; after all, ads that are lost in the clutter of other ads is ad money that is wasted.

The Lesson: On the one hand, if you think about it, a boarding pass already contains an ad: for the airline issuing it. (And how many of us, usually during a period of being stranded in an airport after a cancelled flight, have spent some time defacing that ad? Or is it just me?) Still, I question the value and effectiveness of bombarding people with ads in every single public space. I think it’s time to Google around for some effectiveness studies. That said, though, this kind of strategy will work best when there is some kind of value proposition for the customer: a coupon, a gift, something that will make them pay attention and not just discard the ad. As ad saturation becomes ever more prevalent, advertisers will need something to keep from getting lost in the clutter.

Posted by Richard Romano on July 24, 2008 | Comments (0)