Marketing Up in the Air

You know how we're always talking about on-to-one marketing, big data, analytics and the long-tail? And how we've made a science of marketing to defined demographics? Well, I think we've overlooked an opportunity to leverage tailor made marketing to a very captive population of consumers.

Air Canada and United Airlines list a combined average of 5,800 flights per day (1) each carrying an assumed average of 120 passengers; if only half of these flights are equipped to deliver in-flight entertainment, that's still 2,900 flights. Mathematically, that's about 348,000 passengers per day and more than 127,000,000 per year. (For perspective, IATA states that over 3.1 billion people took commercial flights in 2013 and that number was slated to grow to 3.3 billion in 2014.) (2)

Spafax lists in-flight advertising rates in its brief on Emirates and the relatively high level demographics of passengers (3). A 60 second spot run for 10+ months will cost an advertiser $160,650/month; being conservative, let's say $125,000/month (so for a year $1,500,000; all dollar amounts in USD unless otherwise specified). That's an average cost of about $0.012 per passenger.

Now imagine segmenting these passengers into demographics based on traditional parameters, such as those listed in Spafax's document, and add to it additional granularity on spending habits, loyalty program information, social media usage, travel destination, class of travel, content viewed in-flight, seat position, duration of stay and other possible parameters. Getting the idea here?

Airlines are missing out on the opportunity to offer marketers and advertisers the ability to target their ads to passengers who are otherwise unable to avoid the marketing while in flight; there is no fridge to raid, the bathrooms leave a lot to be desired (sorry AC and UAL, but airline bathrooms are a far cry from what is acceptable in my home) and passengers aren't likely to strike up a conversation with their seat mate while waiting out the ads.

Granted, the numbers may not add up because we're using conservative, assumed and estimated figures, but the logic stands:

captive audience + individual data + catalog of ads = increased reach

Would it be such a stretch to use readily available data to deliver content that is more relevant to a passenger? I don't think so, especially since the BMW, Jaguar and Land Rover ads that Air Canada has run over the past year may appeal more to Business and First Class passengers than the large majority of Sardine Class passengers who fly every year. Targeting ads can only help marketers and, ideally, make the flying experience much more enjoyable for passengers who might actually relate to the ads being presented to them.

(1) Source: Air Canada and United Airlines web sites
(2) http://www.iata.org/pressroom/pr/Pages/2013-12-30-01.aspx Accessed April 17, 2015.
(3) http://www.spafax.com/download/media-kits/emirates-inflight-mediakit.pdf Accessed April 17, 2015.