Airport TV Advertising

Television is usually invokes the image of household members gathered in the living room in front of the television set.  The television ratings that are commonly cited in the press and used in advertising rate negotiations are based upon in-home tuning and viewing.  Actually, there is a sizeable amount of out-of-home television viewing that occurs everyday.  Here are some examples:

• Many bars and restaurants have large television sets for the entertainment of their patrons.  Some of these may be special events such as soccer or boxing championship matches which are otherwise not available to the general population.
• Certain types of businesses need television services for work reasons.  For example, stock traders may need to monitor financial television channels such as Bloomberg Information Television as well as regular news channels such as CNN simultaneously for up-to-the-minute financial and political developments. 
• Increasingly, we are beginning to find television sets appearing in public waiting areas, such as airport lounges, train stations, and even office waiting rooms.

We will present some survey data from the TGI Argentina study.  Of 4,454 survey respondents between the ages of 20 and 64 years old, 7.3% said that they have seen or noticed advertising shown on television sets in airports.  As an absolute number, the reach of this specialized advertising medium is completely dwarfed by regular television, radio, magazine, print, cinema, the yellow pages and even the Internet.  But airport television can be a highly effective advertising medium for several reasons.

THE AUDIENCE

By virtue of their location, airport television is seen by those people who frequent airports, often but not always as passengers.  The following table shows the breakdown by socio-economic level.  The index is defined as 100 times the percentage in the subgroup divided by the total percentage.

(source:  TGI Argentina)

These results show that airport television yields an affluent audience.  But it is much more than that, as the following breakdown by business decision functions shows:

(source:  TGI Argentina)

A large part of the air travel is accounted for by a small number of business travelers who make many trips.  To the extent that these business travelers are entrusted to travel to take care of business, they are also often vested with other business purchasing functions.  The above table shows that they are disproportionately much more involved in business purchases, which would make airport television an efficient medium for reaching them.  You would have to wonder why airport television is not blanketed with internet ads.

GOODWILL

Airport television owns a captive audience, who are sitting in a public lounge waiting for a plane to arrive or depart.  Sometimes, the wait can be extremely long when the flight is delayed due to bad weather or mechanical problems.  The television program therefore offers a free diversion to kill the time.  It is not intrusive because a person can always move to a remote area if they prefer not to watch television.  Therefore, the appreciation that the audience has for the medium is transferred to its sponsors.

ATTENTION

During a long wait at the airport, there may be nothing else to do except to watch television.  This should be compared against the attentional levels that are achieved in the in-home setting (see reference at the bottom of the page about in-home television usage).

THE CONTENT

Consider a television set playing in an airport lounge.  The fact of the matter is that the viewers are there because they are waiting for a plane to arrive or depart.  Therefore, the sound coming from the television set must not be overwhelming to the point that they cannot hear the public announcements of arrival and departure information.  Very often, the television sets are rigged to cut off the sound whenever there is a public announcement.  This meant that the advertising and editorial content should be highly visual and not reliant on sound.  This should be compared against the one-size-fit-all approach for regular television.  And don't forget, you can't zap the program!

WORLD WIDE WEB LINKS

• CarroSell's NielsenAIR Media Report  (research report on airport media usage)
• CNN Airport News (US-based airport television service from CNN)
• SkySites  (airport advertising (not including television))
• SubTV (subway television in Argentina)
• Zona Latina.  Television as Companion.  How often do people have the television set on while they do other things in the house?
• Zona Latina's Travel page

(posted by Roland Soong on 5/19/00)

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