Here’s a scenario that might sound familiar. Your commission campaign is live, direct bookings are solid, and on paper, things look good. But there are parts of your business that feel invisible: the new restaurant that should be drawing guests in before they arrive, the event space that deserves more than a line on your website, the seasonal package that needs a push before the window closes.
This isn’t a problem with your commission campaign. It’s doing exactly what it was built to do—find travelers who are actively searching for rooms and convert them. The gap is elsewhere. A commission algorithm optimizes around room-shopping behavior. If the intent signal doesn’t look like a hotel search, it won’t chase it.
That’s where CPM comes in.
CPM stands for cost per mille—cost per thousand impressions. Unlike Sojern Commission, where you pay when a traveler stays, with the CPM model, you pay a set rate per thousand impressions. When layering a CPM campaign with Sojern Commission, the goal isn’t to drive the same direct booking outcome already covered by Commission. It’s to reach the right audience with a specific message in a specific window to support broader goals—whether that’s building awareness, promoting ancillary offerings, or influencing future travel decisions, regardless of whether travelers are actively searching for a room at that moment.
Think of the two models as solving different problems. A commission campaign is always-on and performance-driven: it uses data and machine learning to identify travelers in a room-shopping mindset and convert them into direct bookings. You only pay when it works. A CPM campaign is episodic and message-driven: you define the goal, the creative, and the timing, and you pay for the reach.
The result is that the two campaigns aren’t competing. They’re covering different ground. Commission converts the demand that already exists. CPM add-ons create and direct demand for the parts of your business our commission algorithms won’t naturally prioritize.
The clearest way to understand what a CPM add-on campaign is for is to look at the audience a commission campaign is built to reach. Commission creative optimizes toward travelers actively shopping for hotel rooms, while a CPM layer can reach entirely different audiences—like event attendees, local diners, wedding planners, or travelers staying elsewhere in the destination. That means messaging around your restaurant, event space, seasonal packages, or renovation story can reach audiences that aren’t currently sending room-booking signals.
CPM fills that gap. Here are some use cases where it adds the most measurable value for independent and boutique properties.
Corporate and MICE bookers research properties months in advance. By the time they’re actively searching, their shortlist is often already set. A CPM campaign targets audiences most likely to convert based on your specific goal and traveler behavior insights, helping you reach the right people with the right message at the right moment.
A new restaurant, chef concept, or F&B event needs an audience before reviews have had time to accumulate. CPM lets you reach prospective guests before they book, so your dining experience is already part of what they’re coming for, not a pleasant surprise after they arrive.
Wedding and group bookers conduct long, research-heavy cycles. CPM reaches them with targeted creative at the moment they’re building their shortlist, generating venue inquiries and brand familiarity well before a commission campaign would ever see them.
A recent renovation is one of your strongest marketing assets, but only if potential guests know about it. CPM lets you reintroduce your property to the market with a clear ‘new look, same great location’ message, reaching new audiences while resetting how existing ones perceive you.
For properties with a significant share of guests traveling from Spain, France, Germany, Italy, or the UK, CPM provides a targeted mechanism to reach those audiences in the right languages and contexts, weeks before a traveler ever searches your property directly.
CPM add-on campaigns are built around defined campaign windows, making them well suited for time-sensitive goals like shoulder-season promotions, staycation offers, or event-driven campaigns. Because pricing is based on impressions delivered rather than completed stays, your messaging stays visible to targeted audiences throughout the exact period you want to promote.
Adding a CPM campaign doesn’t change what your Commission campaign does, nor does it compete for the same bookings. The two work in parallel, each supporting a different objective. While Commission campaigns focus on converting travelers actively shopping for rooms, CPM campaigns are designed to support broader awareness and engagement goals—like promoting on-property experiences, increasing event visibility, driving traffic to seasonal offers, or keeping your property top of mind during key periods.
The most important thing to establish from the start is the campaign goal. CPM campaigns should be structured around awareness or engagement objectives, specifically click-through rate (CTR), rather than direct booking conversions. If both CPM and Commission campaigns optimize toward the same conversion or ROAS goal, you risk bidding against yourself, inflating costs, and creating attribution overlap. When each campaign is aligned to a distinct purpose, CPM becomes a strategic complement to Commission rather than a competing effort.
Two properties, two different use cases—both illustrating what CPM delivers when it’s set up to complement an existing campaign rather than compete with it.
Auberge Saint-Antoine, a luxury hotel in Quebec, is one of the clearest examples of CPM doing exactly what this blog describes: promoting the parts of a business that an always-on campaign won’t naturally prioritize.
The property was already running an always-on display campaign with us. The challenge was low-season occupancy and the need to drive awareness and bookings for two specific revenue streams—food & beverage and meetings & events—that weren’t getting traction through performance-only creative. The solution was layering dedicated CPM campaigns for each outlet on top of the existing campaign, running bilingual creative in French and English across U.S. and Canadian markets.
The MICE campaign achieved 0.20% CTR and the F&B campaign reached 0.17% CTR, both clearing the 0.10% target. Overall, the property recorded a 57.7x ROAS, up 7.4x year-over-year, and a 36.4x ROAS on display specifically.
“Sojern provides great value by combining performance and brand building. The visibility strategy is aligned with our goal to increase direct traffic to our site, leading to stronger margins and more control over the guest experience.”
— Manuela Albarracin, Marketing and Communications Coordinator, Auberge Saint-Antoine
A few questions worth considering:
If any of those resonate, a CPM Add-on is worth a conversation. It doesn’t require a budget overhaul or changes to existing campaigns. It layers on top of what you’re already doing and covers the ground your commission campaign was never designed to reach.
Sojern’s CPM offering is built for properties already running commission campaigns, a targeted activation layer for the events, outlets, packages, and need dates that deserve their own campaign. Speak with your Sojern account manager to explore what a CPM campaign could look like for your property.
Learn more about our solutions or reach out to a Sojern expert today.
CPM stands for cost per mille—cost per thousand ad impressions. Unlike a commission campaign, which charges per booking, CPM charges for reach: you define the audience, message, and timing window, and pay based on how many times your ad is seen. It's built for episodic, message-driven goals—promoting a restaurant launch, event space, seasonal package, or post-renovation re-introduction to travelers who aren't yet in room-shopping mode. For hotels already running commission campaigns, CPM covers the ground a performance algorithm won't naturally reach.
A commission campaign is always-on and performance-driven: it identifies travelers actively searching for rooms and converts them into direct bookings—you only pay when it works. A CPM campaign is episodic and message-driven: you control the audience, creative, and timing window, and pay for the reach. They don't compete—commission converts demand that already exists, while CPM creates and directs demand for the parts of your property a room-booking algorithm won't naturally prioritize, including F&B, events, and seasonal offers.
CPM builds top-of-funnel awareness that feeds the audiences a commission campaign then converts—more branded search, more direct site traffic, more retargeting volume. The key is goal alignment: CPM must run with an awareness or engagement (CTR) goal, not a conversion or ROAS target, or it will bid against your commission campaign and inflate costs. Done right, the two campaigns are additive. Auberge Saint-Antoine used this model to achieve a 57.7x ROAS overall, up 7.4x year-over-year.
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