United Airlines Launches Media Network Using App, Inflight Entertainment Screens

United Airlines has launched a media network that enables brands to deliver personalized advertising and offers to travelers. 

The new Kinective Media by United Airlines makes this personalization possible by using insights from customers’ travel behaviors, and it will deliver these offers via the airline’s mobile app and inflight entertainment screens, the company said in a Friday (June 7) press release.

United Airlines expects that members of its loyalty program, MileagePlus, will receive even more personalized and real-time offers, according to the release.

“We’ve built a first-of-its-kind, real-time, AdTech-enabled traveler media network where brands have already started connecting to premium audiences at an unmatched scale,” Richard Nunn, CEO of MileagePlus, said in the release.

The advertising technology platform used to power this new offering uses anonymized audience segments that can be targeted by marketers, according to the release. It does not share United customers’ personally identifiable information, and it allows U.S. customers to opt out. 

The United mobile app has been downloaded more than 110 million times and sees nearly 100 million use sessions a month, while the airline’s number of seatback screens has reached nearly 100,000 and is expected to grow, per the release.

Kinective Media by United Airlines will differentiate itself from other commerce media platforms by serving brands across a wide range of industries, enabling them to reach engaged customers and doing so in a way that is “highly personalized and relevant,” Nunn said in the release.

“There has been a huge strategic shift within this high growth sector in the past five years where advertisers and brands have come together to determine how best to connect with consumers in a way that’s valuable, effective and personalized,” Nunn said.

It was reported in November that United Airlines was weighing the addition of targeted ads to its passenger information, aiming to use the personalization of ads to enhance the common practices of airlines to use the “captive nature” of their customers to deliver advertising.

PYMNTS Intelligence has found that in the retail space, 71% of shoppers received personalized offers and are interested in them. 

Another 12% of shoppers did not receive personalized offers, but are interested in them, according to “Personalized Offers Are Powerful — But Too Often Off-Base,” a PYMNTS Intelligence and AWS collaboration.