Advertising in Airports is Great – But It is Not for Everyone!

As a 20+ year veteran in the world of airport advertising media – the one question that I am most asked when I tell people about advertising in airports is – “will it work for my business?”.

To that I always respond…maybe.

As like any advertising media – airports are not a perfect fit for all companies and businesses.
I can hear some jaws drop to that comment – but I have always believed in being up front and truthful with clients – because the fact is I view a media deal with a client as a win-win partnership – and for that partnership to be long term I must believe that it makes sense for the client – and in some cases it simply does not.

The biggest strength of airport advertising is its massive delivery of impressions at an extremely affordable value.

What other OOH product can deliver literally tens of millions of impressions for, in many cases, under $10K/month?

And not just run-of-the-mill impressions – but super high end demographic impressions consisting of business and leisure travelers – most with high incomes and affluent job status – as one of my former clients told me – an airport is essentially a building with a minimum cover charge of $100 (the price of a discount airline ticket) – you are not wasting your ad messaging to people that will not be able to afford your products and services. An extremely valuable benefit to any marketer.

But because almost every media placement in almost every airport will deliver a large and affluent audience – there really is no room for low budget inventory – meaning unlike a television or radio station that can sell $50 spots in the wee hours of the morning – airports simply cannot provide that type of media buy – and for many small “mom and pop” businesses with limited advertising budgets – buying an airport ad would not make much sense. A one month buy might eat up their entire annual ad budget – and those dollars could better be used by them in other opportunities.

And as someone who loves closing a deal – a small deli, a single shop hard wood flooring company or a small pool and spa cleaner would simply not see the results to justify the dollars spent to be in the airport – and I have told this to many of these small businesses over the years – simply because it was the right thing to do for those companies.