A year ago, United Airlines launched an ad business, turning seat-back screens, its website and app, and airport lounges鈥攅lements every passenger interacts with鈥攊nto advertising opportunities.
Now, United鈥檚 ad arm, Kinnective Media, says it has run 130 campaigns for more than 100 brands鈥攁nd has plans to expand its offerings.
The ad business鈥 goal is to use data from United鈥檚 loyalty program and customers to give advertisers insights into how brands can better reach travelers.
Kinnective Media is now also selling its ad technology to other airlines, starting with JetBlue as its first partner. Kinnective Media will sell in-flight ads that appear on seat back screens on JetBlue planes.
Later this year, Kinnective Media will open an offsite advertising business that allows advertisers to buy programmatic ads using both JetBlue and United鈥檚 data, said Richard Nunn, CEO of United鈥檚 frequent flier program MileagePlus, who also runs Kinnective Media.
JetBlue adds 40 million traveler profiles to United鈥檚 110 million鈥攇iving Kinnective Media a total reach of 150 million travelers. The JetBlue traveler profile differs from United鈥檚, with a heavier concentration of leisure travelers on the East Coast. Nunn said that Kinnective Media plans to slice these profiles into specific audiences for advertisers鈥攍ike business travelers or travelers in a specific city.
鈥淚t gives them incremental scale, and it gives us a lot more consumer reach in the domestic U.S. market,鈥 Nunn said. 鈥淲e can effectively replicate鈥攁lbeit with a different audience base鈥攕imilar segments that sit within the JetBlue audience profile and get that out into the marketplace.鈥
JetBlue is the first airline that Kinnective Media is working with, but Nunn said that the group is talks with other airlines鈥攖hough he declined to name them.
鈥淲hen we planned to set up the business, there was a thesis that if we could get this right for United, could we syndicate our underlying technology to other airlines?鈥 Nunn said.
Kinective Media aims to differentiate in the increasingly crowded retail media space by pushing for both brand and performance ad dollars. Typically, retailers focus on performance ad dollars to prove that ads drove sales, but there鈥檚 been a greater focus on cutting into brand advertising budgets as they become more measurable.
Nunn鈥檚 pitch to brand advertisers is that Kinnective Media reaches a broad audience of travelers who use United鈥檚 app and website, and visit airport lounges in more than 300 cities.
United declined to share Kinnective Media鈥檚 revenue.
Ads up in the air
Kinnective Media recently began rolling out 鈥減ause ads鈥 on in-flight screens, which display when a viewer pauses a movie or TV show.
But United has bigger plans to help advertisers monetize passengers鈥 time spent in the air. In January, the airline reported it was ahead of schedule in deploying Elon Musk-owned Starlink鈥檚 Wi-Fi to its fleet of aircrafts. The technology will give United鈥檚 MileagePlus loyalty program members free access to Wi-Fi while in the air.
Placing ads within that Wi-Fi experience is a major focus for Kinnective Media over the coming year, Nunn said.
United is also partnering with other companies, like Spotify, to create 鈥渁 living room in the sky鈥 through its Starlink partnership, he said. United fliers can listen to more than 450 hours worth of Spotify content from seat-back screens, including audiobooks and video podcasts. Starting next year, United fliers will be able to link their own account to its seat-back entertainment systems.
Nunn said other similar partnerships are in the works with transportation, hospitality, and shopping companies, with the goal of creating a 鈥渃ommerce marketplace,鈥 he said.
鈥淪hopping, streaming, and gaming can all be opened up within this ecosystem,鈥 Nunn said.