They do and I won't argue that point. It would fly in the face of everything I have seen. Multiple times I have flown on planes based in 3rd world countries to other 3rd world countries and each and every time it was a more pleasant experience than flying domestic in the US. I mean the whole thing. From being dropped off to the airport, to security, to food in the airport, to the comfort levels of the chairs, to the amount of leg room. All of it was better, all of it.
Plus our border is terrible as well. Last year took my family abroad and when we got back to the US my six year old put her little backpack on the scanner too quickly for the Border Guard liking. So the big manly tough guy screamed at my six year old. She proceeded to cry. I wanted to sock him across the face but not as much as I want to avoid a 20 year prison sentence. Next time I will go all Karen and write a letter to go in his file with his badge number. It will make me feel better but fix nothing.
Remember when the assholes at United overbooked a flight and sent someone to knock a doctor's teeth out and carry him off a plane? The doctor refused since he was on his way to oversee the opening of a clinic he founded for veterans.
He and his wife started the clinic as a way to thank American servicemen and women, because he was plucked out of ocean waters by the U.S. Navy as he fled communism in his home country of Vietnam about 44 years ago, he said.
United will kill your dog, bust up your guitar, and knock down and drag out your doctor. They've made the headlines for all three of those. And the guitar guy made a song about United.
Unfortunately, the other airlines aren't much better.
I Vaguely recall that in the dystopian world depicted in the Max Headroom TV series it was illegal to turn off TVs. It felt bonkers to me when I was a kid, but now it doesn't seem too far off.
What's the ROI on ads anyway? I feel like ads are just a way to funnel money between corps. People who are forced to see ads are really not even the point anymore. This is like corporations subsidizing other corporations. Don't even matter that you buy that item being shown to you.
Found a website saying Youtube adviews are $100-300 per 10k (ad views, not video views). That's 1-3¢ per view. If we assume an ad is 10seconds, then your time is worth 0.1-0.3¢ per second, or $3.60-10.80 per hour.
An A380 looks to be 380-615 seats. I'd imagine they're more often optimising for space, so let's say 550.
Long haul flight, 10% of people at any time using inflight stuff, 8 hours, 4 ads per hour = 5500.18*4 ads watched. 1760 ads. There will be a massive premium for planes, but surely only one order of magnitude more (e.g. 10x). That's equivalent to give or take 20k YouTube adviews which would be $200-600 per flight.
There are a lot of planes in the sky every single day though....
The thing is, it's only a ROI if any of those passengers converts to a buyer. The act of seeing an ad creates no value for the manufacturer unless they are converted to a buyer.
What you are describing is a market that has the consumer (ad watcher) almost completely removed from the conversion of capital. Being forced to watch an ad, in this case, only benefits the airline by their receiving ad revenue. The passengers are nearly supflourous.
They could come up with some bullshit like, obstructing your screen is interfering with the display of critical airplane safety information or something.
To begin the flight, please drink Mountain Dew Verification Can.
Verification Can Invalid. Please drink Mountain Dew Verification Can.
ERROR! Passenger attempting to steal Premium Ad-less Flying Option! Adding your name to the No Fly List and automatically deducting penalty fee from your credit card.
i read the article and it didn't seem to state. how will they target me? using the personal info I'm required to give them to book my flight? the origin and destinations and seat location? these are entirely different kinds of metrics. one is far more invasive. and is it tying into larger models they've purchased from like google or something? this is stupid and i hate it.
Does united use the same in flight entertainment system as Delta? If united does they are probably tracking you using the facial detection camera on the seats.
Targeted, individualized, advertising should be illegal. This will gut a lot of the motivations for the privacy invasions and data harvesting. This is how advertising worked for thousands of years. I think it could continue to be just fine.
The amount of resources humanity is spending on targeted advertising is extremely depressing when you consider the opportunity cost. There are thousands of engineers and product managers that spend all day on this stuff instead of anything useful.
