[Infowarrior] - On Advertising: Jets become flying billboards

[Richard Forno]

On Advertising: Jets become flying billboards
By Eric Pfanner
Published: August 26, 2007
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/26/business/ad27.php

LONDON: 'Please return your seat backs and tray tables to their upright and
locked position - and start reading the advertisement that is staring you in
the face."

O.K., you won't actually hear that last part as the flight attendants
prepare an aircraft for landing. But as airlines look for new sources of
revenue to offset rising fuel costs, more carriers are turning planes into
marketing vehicles, installing advertising in hard-to-miss places.

Several American carriers, including US Airways and AirTran, recently
started selling ads on napkins or stickers that appear on open tray tables.
Over the summer, Ryanair, the European low-fare carrier, has gone further,
installing advertising panels on the covers of the overhead luggage
compartments and in the backs of closed tray tables.

Ryanair, and the companies behind these advertising systems, say the new
spots offer marketers an effective way to reach consumers who have cash to
spend and who are increasingly difficult to influence via traditional media
like television and newspapers.

InviseoMedia, which has sold the seat-back ads to Ryanair and another
European low-fare carrier, Germanwings, says the system provides an average
of 40 minutes of "dwell time" during a typical flight. In other words, the
only ways for passengers to avoid the ads, which are placed behind
tamper-proof plastic shields, is to open the tray or get up and stretch
their legs. When they do that, they are confronted with the ads on the
overhead bins, which are being sold by a separate company, Fourth Edition.
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"It's a good medium, a good audience and they're captive to some extent,"
said Dominic Stead, chief executive of Inviseo. "In this day and age, the
opportunity to get someone's attention and hold it is invaluable."

Inviseo started to install its panels in Germanwings planes about two years
ago, and companies like Microsoft, DaimlerChrysler, Hewlett-Packard and HRS,
a German travel Web site, have advertised on them.

Since the seat-back ad space became available in Ryanair planes this summer,
it has attracted only one advertiser: Creative, a maker of digital
entertainment devices. But Stead said the Inviseo system could be popular
with advertisers that link ads to mobile phone call-in and text-message
campaigns, because Ryanair and a number of other airlines plan to enable
in-flight cellphone use soon.

The use of overhead bins for ads has been faster to catch on than the seat
backs, with ads being place by companies like ING, the Dutch bank; Red Bull,
a so-called energy drink; and Meteor Mobile Communications, an Irish
cellphone operator. Martin Barry, managing director of Fourth Edition, said
the ads could generate annual revenue of €6.5 million, or $8.8 million, if
all 41 panels on every one of Ryanair's 137 planes were sold for an entire
year. Like Inviseo, Fourth Edition splits an undisclosed portion of the
proceeds with the airline.

Both Fourth Edition and Inviseo, which are privately held, say they have an
advantage over potential rivals because they have already obtained approval
for their systems, as required by safety regulators.

Will other advertisers and airlines climb aboard? Even though marketers are
eager to connect with consumers in new ways, they are also wary about
annoying them.

"A lot of brands are pretty skeptical about being associated with in-flight
advertising," said Ben Cunningham, a media planner at Vizeum, part of the
London advertising company Aegis. "In general, it has been something pretty
niche for us to advise our clients to get involved with."

Other forms of airborne advertising have been around for some time. Carriers
have turned the outsides of airplane fuselages into flying billboards. They
have sold print ads in their magazines, and some offer video ads in their
seat-back entertainment systems. Several carriers have even experimented
with ads printed on airsickness bags.

Fourth Edition and Inviseo said they were talking with other airlines. But
one budget carrier, easyJet, said it was not interested for now. "Onboard
advertising is not something we're looking to at the moment," said Marianne
West, a spokeswoman. "I think we're quite happy to advertise our own brand
onboard."

Eric Pfanner can be reached at adcol at iht.com.