The case for in-flight advertising for audience engagement and retargeting

Sponsored by Viasat Ads • February 24, 2026 •

Between struggling to be remembered in a sea of ads overwhelming consumers and guaranteeing actual people see an ad, many advertisers continue to battle with ad fatigue, low recall, fraud and more. However, one environment has proved a standout: in-flight advertising.

In-flight advertising offers the advantages of OOH and digital, delivering messages directly to a captive audience of real people who have time on their hands. It’s a digital channel, so marketers can accurately track performance — and bots can’t access these in-flight portals, so every click, view and impression is legitimate.

The in-flight audience is also highly engaged, educated, more likely to have a high income, recall ads, etc. — enabling advertisers to reach their target audiences more effectively.

While advertisers have long been able to know the number of passengers on a plane, they weren’t able to know whether people saw an ad. The ability to now know the audience is real people who have watched ads delivered in real time allows marketers to target in-flight audiences both in the air and across numerous other channels — ultimately gaining access to a highly valuable audience.

An inherently safe, bot-free environment with real, valuable views

Amid excessive ad placements, increased ad frequency and rampant ad fraud — where bots that scrape the internet can be counted as views — it’s vital to verify ads are seen by real people. Without this verification, advertisers can end up paying for false views, resulting in about $84 billion in ad fraud in 2023, according to Statista.

This has driven up the resource and brainpower costs associated with campaign creation and implementation, impacting bottom lines and making it challenging to identify high-quality media opportunities.

“The in-flight space is controlled, so we know who the publishers are — the airline portals — they’re all credible publishing sites, and the ads are served through our platform itself,” said Chris Demange, vp of monetization and commercial aviation business at Viasat Ads. “The audience is verified because the only people on planes have gone through metal detectors, so there’s no opportunity for a bot to enter. We’ve also integrated with DoubleVerify so advertisers have complete confidence that our measurements are accurate.”

When placing ads on the open internet, advertisers are likely to be exposed to a broad swath of publishers, including places where bots can generate fictitious traffic. However, in-flight, all impressions and views are legitimate; the audience is highly engaged — they’re in a unique space without any distractions — and bots can’t enter the space. Their state of mind allows marketers to stand out, and test different formats and messaging, knowing it will be seen. This makes in-flight advertising an inherently safe environment.

An invaluable audience — in-flight and beyond

It isn’t just that this audience is highly engaged; it includes frequent travelers with many predictable actions and demographics that marketers can use to their advantage.

“When we first started, we assumed our main clientele would be targeting vacation travelers, but what we discovered was that while that’s an appealing demographic for a lot of advertisers, it’s just one of many categories out there that in-flight advertising attracts,” Demange said. “What we’ve found is that our audience is extremely valuable for premium brands and large enterprise verticals.”

According to consumer insights studies from Statista, U.S. airline customers skew more millennial, are educated with at least a bachelor’s degree and tend to live in large cities.

Additionally, airline customers are more likely to be high-income earners, at 54% compared to 33% of the general population. Advertisers can use this information to create targeted messaging without personally identifiable information. Additionally, studies from Statista revealed specific habits this audience tends toward, which advertisers can leverage to appear in the right spaces and formats, thereby maximizing their investments and providing a more tailored experience for this audience.

This information is invaluable to advertisers as they design campaigns that target in-flight audiences beyond the aircraft. For example, to reach this audience in more meaningful native spaces, marketers can consider digital audio/podcasts, news publications and local theaters as placement opportunities to get in front of these consumers where they’re already actively consuming content.

Continuous ad campaigns for high engagement

Once advertisers better understand the types of people they can reach in-flight, they can develop continuous campaigns to reach their audiences most effectively.

“We know what flights are business versus leisure,” said Demange. “We know what routes are filled with vacationers. We know when large conferences are held and can ensure the advertiser is the first brand consumers see on their journey and the last brand on the way home.”

“A really effective tactic we see a lot is targeting flights to and from international cities,” he continued. “For example, we have a campaign running from an advertiser that enables money transfers. They are reaching people who are returning from visiting loved ones. It’s a great time to say, ‘Hey, here’s a way to enable money transfer to your relatives back home.’ This was a perfect example of a brand connecting with its target audience, people with relatives in Mexico.”

Sponsored Wifi is an effective way to reach consumers before a large event and enable retargeting. This format presents consumers with an ad, redirects them to an advertiser’s site and then rewards them with free internet. The advertiser can drop a cookie and later retarget that person post-event with additional messaging to keep up that momentum.

For events that generate a lot of buzz but are often more expensive to get ad placements, like the Super Bowl, using this strategy means getting in front of this audience before they reach a major event — letting the ads appear in a more impactful space where fewer ads are served.

“We see advertisers who will want to target flights to certain cities during the game weekends because they know that audience is there,” Demange said. “We’ve seen huge takeover opportunities for the Super Bowl in the past and other sporting events because it’s adjacent to the prime target and is a great opportunity to reach out to those customers. You also get the premium portion of the audience [those flying into the event versus those watching it on TV] and doing it in a way that’s different from the 50 different ads playing while someone is asking if anyone wants more chips.

“In-flight is where you have that attention and focus,” he continued. “They’re free of distractions, which doesn’t happen very often nowadays.”

Partner insights from Viasat Ads