If you’re serving ads 35,000 feet in the sky, it helps to have internet.
Starting next year, United Airlines plans to bring free, satellite-powered wi-fi to flights through a partnership with Starlink that was first announced in September. The connectivity will “supercharge” the airline’s newly created advertising business, Kinective Media, Richard Nunn, CEO of United’s loyalty program MileagePlus, told Marketing Brew.
United claims to be the first airline to stand up an advertising business, and Kinective Media will target passengers with personalized ads served across the airline’s in-flight entertainment screens, as well as on its app and website. Thanks to Starlink, those capabilities are accelerating, Nunn told us, allowing the airline to strike new deals with media partners with the aim to target passengers mid-flight in real time.
“It will allow us to be programmatic in the sky,” Nunn said.
That effort is also expected to bring in more revenue for the ad business. Today, the airline is “developing agreements” with streamers and media companies that could see the airline getting a cut of revenue generated from in-flight entertainment or serving its own ads directly, said Nunn, who led Comcast’s digital and linear ad-tech platform before he joined United.
When Kinective Media debuted in June, United joined an increasingly fragmented retail and commerce media category. Retailers like Walmart, apps like Uber, and even hotel chains like Marriott have stood up advertising businesses designed to exchange their customers’ first-party data and eyeballs for advertising revenue. The retail media category is estimated to reach $166 billion by 2025 and is expected to be responsible for 20% of all digital media spend this year, according to eMarketer.
Taking flight
Kinective Media is built on some 100 million unique ID built off of data United collects to book tickets, Nunn said. When they purchase a flight, passengers share what he described as “golden data points,” including their date of birth; United uses this data to build audience segments for advertisers, ranging from where travelers are heading to and where they live to age groups and demographics. The airline has even more data for its MileagePlus loyalty members that allows for more granular targeting.
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Advertisers are already getting on board. Luxury fashion brand Bottega Veneta and scotch brand Macallan used Kinective to target United’s first-class passengers, Nunn said, and Macy’s, IHG Hotels & Resorts, Norwegian Cruise Line, and TelevisaUnivision have all worked with the platform, according to a company press release.
United is selling ads on in-flight screens, as well as in its lounges and on digital boards in airports, Nunn said. Ads are served to all flights that take off and land within the US
Unlike retailers who might not see much business from brands they don’t carry on their shelves (as in, you likely won’t see Jeep or Ford advertising through Sephora), Nunn said he doesn’t think United should be limited to pitching travel advertisers.
“We are active in delivering relationships and ads across multiple verticals,” he said. “The launch partners were very specific; we can touch every single vertical based on the scale and quality of our audiences.”
In fact, he expects retail media networks—which he calls “commerce media” because, he noted, “we’re not a retailer”—to begin to collaborate. “I think there’s an opportunity for the commerce media space to work together as one, because ultimately we’re trying to get [market] share off of Meta, YouTube, and Amazon,” Nunn said.
Though the business remains in an “investment phase,” United CEO Scott Kirby told investors during the airline’s Q3 earnings call that Kinective could make “a little bit of money” next year and could “really start to accelerate in ’26 and beyond.”
Turbulence? How brand-safe is the stratosphere? Well, in late October, one person claimed in a post on X that they were served an ad for a phone-sex line while watching the seat-back TV on a United flight. Nunn said that the airline’s in-flight TV partner, DirecTV, was responsible for serving the ad.
“Hey, it’s not on our systems,” he said.
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