Marketers Targeting Captive Airline Passengers

WSJ (paid subscription required)
Airline passengers are a marketer's dream: an audience so captive they are literally strapped in and starved for entertainment. And most of them have a decent amount of disposable income. Marketers have long known the benefits of targeting this group, but it hasn't been easy. For one thing, many airlines have been reluctant to cut deals, fearing it may jeopardize their own brand. But that is changing in an era when airline are fighting off bankruptcy and looking desperately for ways to cut operating costs. As a result, the door is opening a bit wider for marketers. One company taking advantage of the development is MasterCard International, which is providing complimentary snacks, movie headphones and puzzles and games aboard nearly 600 American Airlines flights during the holiday-travel season. Even so, marketers need to be cautious because bombarding consumers with ads as they sit in the crowded coach section might cause a backlash, says David Melançon, president, North America, for Interpublic Group of Cos.' FutureBrand. "It's an opportunity that is fraught with peril," he says, adding that advertisers can avoid passengers' ill feelings by sticking to products or gifts that provide comfort or entertainment.

"The Other side of this life" -- David Byrne

How tech billionaires live

December 8, 2005 6:41 PM PST

Ever wanted to be a fly on the uber-mansion walls of Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs or Michael Dell?

Forbes.com has published a little article (plus a slide show and video) on the very big homes of America's billionaires. You can't see inside the digs, but you do get a look at the sprawling exteriors, as well as some details on the way-above-average domestic accoutrements.

Coming in at No. 1 with a net worth of $46.6 billion is Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, whose 66,000-square-foot compound is built into a hillside on the edge of Lake Washington outside Seattle. The home has a 60-foot-long swimming pool with an underwater music system. There's a domed library with two "secret" bookcase doors and a 1,000-square-foot dining room, according to Forbes.

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison shows up at No. 9 with a net worth of $18.4 billion. He lives about 30 miles south of San Francisco in an estate styled after an imperial Japanese palace. Then there's Michael Dell at No. 9. He lives in a 33,000-square-foot hilltop Austin mansion. Jobs, ranked 194 with a net worth of $3 billion, kicks back in a 17,000-square-foot mansion in Woodside, Calif.

Not too shabby--and not too surprising given that Forbes' list of the richest Americans continues to be quite hospitable to the biggest names in tech.

Top 10 Online Travel Destinations

Map sites top the list of online travel sites visited the week ending November 20.

Brand or Channel Unique Audience (000) Active Reach (%) Time Per Person (hh:mm:ss) MapQuest 12,919 10.08 0:09:38 Google Maps 5,277 4.12 0:05:37 Southwest Airlines 4,891 3.82 0:18:54 Expedia 4,208 3.28 0:08:47 Travelocity 3,464 2.7 0:10:53 Orbitz 3,311 2.58 0:09:51 American Airlines 2,409 1.88 0:15:50 Yahoo! Travel 2,156 1.68 0:02:55 Google Earth 2,058 1.61 0:19:53 Cheap Tickets 1,685 1.31 0:06:57

Source: Nielsen//NetRatings

SmartPages, RealPages Partner For Local Search

by Shankar Gupta, Monday, Dec 5, 2005 6:00 AM EST

ONE YEAR AFTER ACQUIRING THE YellowPages.com URL, SBC and Bell South last week joined forces to launch a local directory and search engine at the site. The venture combines the telephone directory databases of SBC and Bell South, and also offers maps and directions, city guides, and product guides. Kelsey Group Analyst Greg Sterling said that uniting the SmartPages.com, RealPages.com, and YellowPages.com brands is a good start, but that the search tool isn't yet in shape to compete with the Internet giants now inhabiting the local space--Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. "It's an evolutionary step, and it was a challenging thing for them to integrate all these things," he said. "They've made it more user-friendly, but it's definitely a product that will need to continue to evolve to be competitive." He added that the online local space is becoming a very tough market to crack indeed. "All these companies are focused on this area. Yahoo!, AOL, MSN, and Google--they're doing some very, very interesting things, so it's a very competitive marketplace," he said. "They [SBC and Bell South] clearly want to be thought of when people think of local information. I think they see very clearly that Yahoo! and MSN and AOL and Google are competitors."

GETTING WARMER

Canadians are visiting Hawaii and staying longer in 2005 than a year ago. Here are year-to-date Canadian visitor numbers through October.

Visitor arrivals: 188,381, up 10.1%
Average length of stay: 12.99 days, up 0.6%
Visitor days: 2.4 million, up 10.8%
Average daily spending: $128 per person, off 0.4%
Average trip spending: $1,656 per person, up 0.2%
Total expenditures: $312 million. up 10.4%

indie city websites

 Independent City Sites Compete With MSM [by rafat]  : Our conference contributor Dorian Benkoil has penned an interesting report for Borrell Associates, covering the indie city website competing against local TV and newspaper websites. These low-cost and scrappy competitors shun local news, obituaries and classified ads, focusing almost exclusively on fun and interesting things to do around town.
Many of these independent local sites are reporting revenues well into six figures, and some recently formed their own trade group, Associated Cities. A flurry of acquisitions has begun as well, including a $500,000 acquisition for a "City.com " URL, and a $12 million offer by a newspaper publisher for LasVegas.com. (This reminds me of the New City Network of indie websites back in the late 90s..it is now defunct)
Independent sites tend to have a fraction of the traffic and revenue of competitors who are financed and promoted by traditional-media outlets, but the underdogs offer an interesting lesson: Keep it simple, keep it upbeat, and don't forget the out-of-market traffic. They are focusing on sites that win attention from locals and travelers alike, and are tapping ad revenues from some of the largest spenders on interactive advertising: hotels, casinos, airlines, real estate agents, resorts and restaurants. [Nov.29: Link] | Nanopublishing |

Borrell: Independent Local Sites Threaten Newspapers

by Wendy Davis, Wednesday, Nov 30, 2005 6:00 AM EST

AS IF THE NEWSPAPER INDUSTRY didn't have enough headaches, a new study finds they face growing competition from independent local Web sites that focus on travel and entertainment. "Locally focused pure-play Internet sites have gained a foothold in many markets," states the report, "Independent City Sites Gain Steam: A New Threat to Old Media," released Tuesday by Borrell Associates. These independent local sites are growing quickly and "elbowing in on territory that traditional local media properties have been trying to stake out for the past decade," states the report. Many of these sites use a url that includes the name of their city, like Houston.com and Toledo.com. As a result, they garner traffic even without much marketing, because some people navigate the Web by typing proper names directly into a url field. Toledo.com, for instance, is the tenth most trafficked site in the city, according to the report. For the most part, these sites focus on entertainment, nightlife, and travel, while rarely reporting on local news, according to the report. Borrell also states that annual revenues at these local sites have "moved into the six-figure range"--and in some cases, surpass $1 million. "As the Internet tide rises, these once-mired local boats have begun to float," states the report. "From Atlanta to Yuma and from the suburbs of Syracuse to the tiny Gulf town of Port Aransas, Texas, small, independently run local sites have begun to pick up significant steam." So far, however, independent city.com sites have profit margins of around 24 percent--compared to Web sites of local media, which are around 60 percent, according to Borrell. The independent sites also account for less than 1 percent of local online advertising, while media-run Web sites take in between 3 and 18 percent, according to the report. The newspaper industry, meanwhile, continues to struggle with profit margins and circulation, as well as ad dollars that have been lost to online classifieds like Craigslist. Earlier this week, the Pew Internet & American Life Project and comScore Networks issued a report stating that 26.3 million Web users visited one of the top 15 classified sites in September--marking an 80 percent increase from last year.