Flyin’ commercial… Hyper-specific ads could be coming to a reclined seat near you. United Airlines is said to be considering ramping up its advertising biz with a little help from the troves of data it collects on its 148M annual passengers. If it ultimately does roll out targeted ads, it would join a handful of major companies raking in revenue through “retail media,” ads sold based on customer data by a company whose main biz isn’t advertising.
Prepare for marketing: United’s targeted ads could pop up on your seat back (picture: a Disney World commercial en route to Orlando) or appear while you’re booking a flight.
Upright and locked in: The benefit for advertisers would be United’s captive customers at 30K feet. Still, studies have shown that travelers tend to be more receptive to ads they find helpful (like: restaurants near your hotel).
This is your data speaking… United wouldn’t be the first company to scrape customer info for $$. Last year Marriott introduced a network that uses customer data to place personalized ads on hotel-room TVs (Rolex commercial in your Vegas suite?). Uber, which has doubled down on in-app ads, thinks the new biz could hit $1B next year. This year, marketers are forecast to spend $46B on retail media, with the industry expected to surpass TV ad rev by 2028.
Personalization comes at a cost… More than 37% of customers say they hate targeted ads, leaving companies like United with a dilemma: lose out on millions of $$ or alienate millions of customers. But if travelers see personalized ads on every leg of their trip, they may simply get used to them (hate or no).