Sallie Starts Serving Ads to Students Looking for Scholarships

Students and parents looking for scholarships or grants through Sallie, a sister website of private student loan lender Sallie Mae, may soon start to see ads for cars or apparel brands. In March, Sallie launched Backpack Media, an ad business that offers brands access to its data about Gen Z and Gen Alpha students. Advertisers use this data to target people across its properties as well as across the web and on streaming platforms. Marco Steinsieck, former head of Sephora's retail media business, leads Backpack Media. “We're empowering Gen Z by knowing their financial, their educational, and housing attributes, and by knowing what life stages that they're across," said Munif Jaafar, senior director of strategy and revenue at Backpack Media, who joined the company in March from Macy's Media Network, where he was head of ad sales. Unlike many retail media networks that start with onsite ads such as sponsored listings, Backpack Media has initially focused on using its first-party data to sell campaigns across the web and on social platforms. Over the past year, the company has built partnerships with companies such as Kargo, Magnite, and LiveRamp to be able to run offsite ads, Jaafar said. “I really do believe, for less than a year in, we're pretty sophisticated." About a month ago, Backpack Media finally started selling ads on its own platform, beginning with ads placed next to informational articles on subjects such as scholarships, preparing for college, and financial aid. Jaafar said the company only recently got the approval to run ads on its own site because it has been careful in testing to make sure ads don't get in the way of people applying for scholarships. Jaafar said Backpack Media can also run direct mail campaigns for advertisers and hopes to expand into email in 2027. Sallie, which used to be known as Scholly until Sallie Mae parent company SLM Corp. acquired it in 2023, provides information on scholarships, grants, colleges, and financing to prospective students and their families. Through predictive audience segments, Backpack Media knows where students are going to school, what they are studying, their credit profile, and anticipated net income, Jaafar said. While Sallie is separate from the student loan lender Sallie Mae, Backpack Media has access to the financial attributes of people who apply for a scholarship through Sallie, such as their credit score, whether they have a car, and what their housing situation is, Jaafar told ADWEEK. Backpack Media claims to reach about 16 million people, including 11 million students and 5 million parents, he said. “At the root of it is utilizing our first-party deterministic data," Jaafar said. He said Sallie reaches two in three college-bound freshmen in any given year. Jaafar said the company has not yet determined whether ads will ever run on Sallie Mae's loan-servicing website, adding that the Sallie website generates more web traffic. “You may overestimate potentially how much scale SallieMae.com has," he said. "If you think about it, you're probably only going in to quickly make a payment, if that, because once you set it up on auto-pay, you probably don't need to go back in.” Selling brands on data about college freshmen Jaafar declined to share exact revenue figures, but said Backpack Media has between 40 and 50 advertisers since it launched in March. These include categories such as auto, cell phones, social platforms, apparel, shoes, beauty, CPG, educational universities, and finance. Backpack Media's users are experiencing lots of first moments that brands are interested in tapping into—like getting credit cards, phone plans, and internet plans, Jaafar said. "We know Gen Z and when they're about to take their first moments," he added. "Advertisers come to us because of exactly that. They want to create those first-time moments, new customers, new brand buyers, and convert them to lifetime-value consumers." Sallie could offer information to advertisers that they can't get through a traditional retail media buy focused on transactional data, said Drew Cashmore, chief strategy officer at retail media tech platform Vantage. Cashmore said Backpack Media could be a supplement to other retail media networks, allowing brands to augment their data pools with more student data alongside what retailers such as Walmart or The Home Depot know about their customers. "They can maybe start to form more conglomerates in this space that allow for a much more appealing buy for an advertiser," he said. But Cashmore also said that it's not clear if leveraging Sallie's broad set of data set will be enticing enough to brands. He said many advertisers are trying to figure out what data from ad networks is differentiated from demand-side platforms and retailers. “There's a lot of testing that is happening today to better understand how to most effectively reach and engage consumers," Cashmore said. "It's going to have to happen in many different places until we really understand what is creating overall uplift.”

Retail Media Networks

Sallie Starts Serving Ads to Students Looking for Scholarships

Backpack Media, part of Sallie Mae's sister company, is now selling onsite placements

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Mitchell Parton

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