Dépêches

Boingo Brings Sponsored Wi-Fi to Airports via New Marketing Partnerships

Dépèche transmise le 10 novembre 2009 par Business Wire

LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Boingo Wireless Inc., the world’s leading operator of Wi-Fi networks in airports, today announced that recent Wi-Fi access sampling campaigns have generated up to 35% increases in revenue at select airports, while delivering click-through rates of up to 39% for sponsors.

These breakthrough promotional marketing campaigns have been sponsored by national hotel chains that wanted to communicate key amenities to a highly targeted audience, by leading search providers that wanted to fuel trials of their newly launched search tool, and by consumer electronics manufacturers whose products are targeted at early adopters.

“Sponsored access works on many levels by providing a great amenity for passengers at no cost to them, and delivering a short-term boost to an airport’s paid Wi-Fi concession through incremental sponsorship dollars,” said Jim Janowiak, vice president of business development for airports at Boingo Wireless. “Because of the high value, the associated fees are significantly higher than traditional online advertising buys, which is what helps preserve overall revenues for the airport in light of cannibalization of core offerings during sampling campaigns.”

While sponsored access does not replace airport revenues associated with for-pay Wi-Fi networks, it does provide the airports the best of all possible worlds: ongoing revenue from the paid Wi-Fi network, plus incremental revenue during sponsored campaign windows. These promotional marketing programs usually run from one week to one month and tend to focus on a single airport or be targeted to several airports simultaneously that match up to a brand or product demographic or test market scenarios.

“Because the user interacts directly with the sponsoring brand in order to redeem the complimentary session, the value to the sponsor is very high,” said David Staas, senior vice president, marketing at JiWire, Boingo’s advertising sales partner. “For brand marketers it offers a unique way to reach a desirable and sometimes elusive prospect – business travelers.”

How it Works

The sponsored access program presents a channel for brand owners to engage the hard-to-reach business professional in a captive environment by subsidizing complimentary Wi-Fi sessions in exchange for interacting directly with their brand.

These campaigns typically offer travelers 15 to 20 minutes of complimentary Internet access in exchange for watching a 30-second video where the user is engaged directly with the brand. Other opportunities to engage consumers include lead generation, product and service trials, social media applications, location-based searches, customer surveys and downloadable content.

The Wi-Fi sampling program provides a deeper level of interaction than traditional online display advertising through multiple impressions including a welcome screen, a decision page, the body of the campaign, and a thank you page, all of which sit in front of the Wi-Fi firewall. Once their sponsored session has expired, the user has the option to purchase Wi-Fi access at prevailing rates for the hotspot.

About Boingo Wireless

Boingo Wireless, Inc., the global market leader in Wi-Fi, makes it simple and easy for people to enjoy Wi-Fi access on their laptop or mobile device at more than 130,000 hotspots worldwide. With a single account, Boingo users can logon to the Boingo Network locations that include the top airports around the world, major hotel chains, cafés and coffee shops, restaurants, and metropolitan hot zones. Boingo, and its Concourse Communications Group subsidiary, operate wired and wireless networks at 55 airports worldwide, covering 43% of all North American enplanements, as well as the WSDOT Ferries Division Wi-Fi network. For more information about Boingo, please visit http://www.boingo.com.

Boingo, Boingo Wireless, Boingo Mobile, the Boingo Wireless Logo and Don’t Just Go. Boingo! are registered trademarks of Boingo Wireless, Inc. All other trademarks are the properties of their respective owners.