Ad-Air Hopes To Capitalize On Captive Audiences

For many decades now, airplanes have been used to tow banners and write enormous smoky messages, hoping to draw the attention of people on the ground to advertisements in the sky.

Now...at least two ad firms in the UK are reversing the concept -- creating gigantic, flat ads which are seen only by pilots and their passengers from above.

Reuters reports a company called Ad-Air launched its new service in London on Tuesday, offering clients huge ads near the runways of some of the world's busiest runways.

Ad-Air has reportedly raised five million British pounds in equity and spent five years securing sites around airports including Heathrow, Paris, Geneva, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Tokyo and Abu Dhabi.

The attraction is the ability to display an ad message in an uncluttered environment... something which gets harder to find every day.

As ANN reported, the industry has a short but controversial history in the UK... where ad firm Sports Media Gaming painted a field beneath an approach to London Gatwick Airport with a 100-thousand square-foot ad for an erotic website, featuring the silhouette of a naked female pole dancer. Two years ago, that same firm used nude images of a man with two women to promote a deodorant.

Presumeably, Ad-Air's execution of the concept will be approached more tastefully. Especially in the space under the approach to Abu Dhabi International.

FMI: www.ad-air.com/