Yes, The campaign was successful, but it needs to be careful. What American Airlines does is online marketing. Here, American Airlines does online marketing by doing online advertising that targets consumers through a database-driven behavioural targeting system rather than contextual targeting. In a database-driven behavioural targeting system, marketers will use elements such as benefit sought, purchase occasion, usage frequency, and usage status. By using these elements, what American Airlines has to offer in WSJ Online looks very desirable and relevant to prospective customers.
Moreover, with the help of software from Revenue Science, the producer can get the usage frequency of readers, they will track and record where visitors go and what they read on the website. The software will recognize readers who frequently read travel columns and features from WSJ.com. Furthermore, readers will be grouped into a group labelled as ‘travel seekers’. From here, the database targeting system invisibly allows the audience to be directed to American Airlines advertisements even though they are not in the aviation-related sector.
Moreover, Revenue Science uses usage frequency to assume that the more time a reader spends on a travel feature, the more business trips a reader is interested in doing. In fact, Revenue Science can also make the smart guess that the person takes a trip once a year for business. Then, after the data has been collected, all visitors and readers of WSJ Online see multimedia, large format advertisements, featuring testimonials from customers. American Airlines advertises on facilities offered that low-cost carriers do not have, such as the ability to upgrade to First Class; that American Airlines frequently flies to many parts of the world; and the benefits of the frequent-flyer program. Revenue Science also assesses online advertising that this advertisement is 25% cheaper when advertising to groups that fly once a year and 45% cheaper to reach segments that fly five times a year. Furthermore, By using online marketing, producers can find out the degree of improvement obtained in terms of audience composition.
However, by using this advertising, consumer privacy is something that must be maintained. Companies must ensure that when managing their readers’ data, they have strong security and permission from both parties. It cannot be denied that marketers may know too much about the lives of consumers, and they may use this knowledge to take unfair advantage of consumers. Besides, digital marketing is also considered difficult to control because of the large number of consumers who must be identified and grouped according to the target.