Robert Silk
United is now selling customer data so that companies can push targeted advertisements throughout the travel journeys of its flyers.
It's a money grab that makes me uncomfortable.
As United unveiled the initiative in early June, MileagePlus CEO Richard Nunn touted the platform, called Kinective Media, as "a first-of-its-kind, real-time, ad-tech-enabled traveler media network where brands have already started connecting to premium audiences at an unmatched scale."
United even went so far as to pitch this commoditization of its flyers as a benefit to them, saying it would, "enhance the travel experience by providing a more personalized advertising solution for customers."
As a regular United flyer, I say, "no thanks."
Kinective enables advertisers to push targeted messages via the United app and website as well as on in-flight entertainment screens, in United lounges and elsewhere in airports. The enterprise's product is the vast reams of information that we as flyers provide to United.
The airline, at least, isn't providing advertisers with personal information, such as race, ethnic origin or disabilities. And the information it's selling isn't personally identifiable.
Instead, the data amounts to anonymized demographics, such as age group, city of residence and flight information.
How will that impact United's flyers?
Well, imagine you're headed for a visit to Chicago. United knows this, and now, so does its advertising clients. So, as you check in on the app, you could see advertisements for local hotels, events or other merchants, targeted based upon your age group, and also based upon what your flight schedule suggests to advertisers is the purpose of your trip: leisure or business.
Flyers can expect similar types of deployments for in-flight entertainment, including on seatback screens or while streaming to their own devices. Indeed, in promoting Kinective Media, United notes that its 100,000 seatback screens each offer a potential for nearly 3.5 hours of advertising exposure per flight, based on average flight time.
If this enterprise is a success, flyers are likely to endure an increasing number of ads while tuning in to United's in-flight entertainment.
I get it. The airline business is a low-margin and volatile one. And offering services such as seatback entertainment, fast WiFi and a quality app all cost money.
But as industry analyst and consultant Bob Mann said to me in an email exchange, United should find solutions that don't feel so, well, shameless.
"Why not optimize every daily flight operation to deliver more customers on time, reduce delays and delay minutes, reduce flying and emissions and noise, reduce operating and servicing cost, improve customer outcomes and employee quality of work-life," Mann said. "A real basis on which to differentiate an otherwise commodity seat."
I don't want to suggest that United isn't already doing that type of work. But Delta, with whom United is competing the hardest for premium travelers, has led the large U.S. airlines for six straight months in on-time performance, according to the aviation data company Cirium, and has consistently bested United in that key metric in recent years.
In other words, there are still ways for United to enhance its selling power that don't involve selling our data for targeted advertising.
The good news is that on the United website, U.S. residents can opt out of receiving targeted Kinective Media advertisements.
That's what I intend to do, even though United warns that opt-out won't mean fewer ads, just less relevant ones.