What United Airlines Should Do With Their Online Advertising
They say there’s a fine line between clever and stupid. I’ll let you be the judge on this next exploration of what we could do to make United Airlines’ current winter promotion perform better. We have some other brands up our sleeve for future episodes 
There’s more to this than just a playful jab, however. I’m actually a United frequent flyer (about to make 1K this year!) and get served these ads constantly. I know they’re doing some heavy retargeting. Just, the messages they’re choosing have absolutely nothing to do with me, or the user profile they clearly have of me.
Here’s the thing: half the time I see their ads its for something irrelevant that I already get for free as a frequent flyer: “Opt for Extra Legroom with Economy Plus” — yes, I get that for free and so does everybody else with the profile you’ve identified me with when I log in. How about instead of that messaging, you remind me when prices drop, go up, or seats are running out on that flight I searched for today. Or how much I could pay to get upgraded to First on my next flight I already booked…
I know what you’re thinking — you’re such a small subset of their audience, Paul, they are targeting a much broader set. Really though? The set that I’m a part of likely makes up 80% of their profits, yet they’re mass marketing to the set that gives them 20%. The moral here is that dynamic messaging, and proper intent derivation allows you to tailor messages (offers!) to the audiences that are most likely to respond to them. And the ad in the video isn’t that hard to do…