Advertising opportunity on airplane

Finally, we no longer have to power off our devices during take off and landing. A federal advisory committee concluded that most aircrafts today can handle the electronic devices during all phases of the flight.

If passengers can use their electronic devices, it represents even more opportunities to advertise! Think about the captivated audience that will sit in the same place for hours on end waiting to be entertained and reached with great content and even better commercials.

Travelers by airplane represent a more lucrative demographics to advertisers. They are more affluent and have more disposable income to spend. Airlines collected detailed biographical data about the passengers. The segmentation data is really fine-tuned for all the passengers. The general rule of thumb is that the more data you know about the audience, the better targeting you can achieve. Airline passengers disclose gender, age, fare class, travel patterns to the airlines. These kind of data can offer great insights to offer targeted ads.

This is an opportunity area for advertisers to reach the airline travelers better than before. Why can't internet connectivity be offered for free in exchange for opportunities to show advertisement? Customers are receptive to the idea that if a product or service is free, they themselves are the product. Think about free search, online videos. The entire business model of the digital advertising space is to offer free services in exchange for reach to the audience.

The passengers are waiting for good access to the full internet for years now. The technical barriers are coming down. Who is going to step in and capture the full attention of airline travelers? 815 million of them!

Source:
http://allthingsd.com/20130930/aircraft-can-handle-electronic-device-use-panel-to-tell-faa/?refcat=media
http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/press_releases/bts016_13