American Airlines lets fly with GPS taxis.

American Airlines harnessed London’s iconic black cabs for its October 2017 campaign, a real-time geofenced initiative, that used mobile advertising to retarget people who had been in close proximity to the 85 wrapped taxis.

Conceived in partnership with planning agency MediaCom, mobile targeting specialist Mobsta and research agency, Research Now, the Ubiquitous taxis were fitted with GPS, to allow us to understand, for the first time ever, where the campaign was travelling to in London, and identify the people who had likely seen it.

Brady Byrnes, American Airlines’ director of global marketing, said: "American Airlines is all about innovation. Our flights from London give travellers the most connected experience, with on-board Wi-Fi being at the very heart of this offering. That’s why we’re proud to work with MediaCom to push digital innovation and offer this exciting media first."

Ubiquitous’s research found that taxis tend to concentrate in those areas populated by American Airlines’ target audience of ABC1s. Mobsta's demographic data ensured that the mobile ads are only sent to the phones of that target group.   To assess the effect of seeing the taxis, Research Now recontacted consuemers to see if their experience of seeing the taxi adertising had a positive effect on brand consideration, which it did!

Daemon Brown, commercial director at Ubiquitous, said: “Our research tells us that taxi advertising dominates city centre streets and will take American Airlines into areas where their target audience is most likely to be. Tapping into taxi location data to determine proximity to the target audience is an innovation that will deliver valuable additional brand touchpoints.”

Denise Breslin, managing director at Mobsta, added: “We have been harnessing location data to complement OOH with targeted mobile for some time, most recently offering pre-campaign insights to improve planning and buying efficiencies. However, the solution, which has been developed specifically for American Airlines, truly demonstrates what creative thinking and location data can do together when used to better understand the effect of a media placement/buy like taxi media.”