Heathrow Terminal 5 to be advertisers paradise
17.02.08
In addition to state of the art facilities, Michelin stared restaurants and designer boutiques, Heathrow's new Terminal 5 will also have more advertising than almost any airport in the world. From giant billboards overlooking security lines to television screens in the underground train station, the ads have been positioned in ways BAA hopes will make them impossible to avoid.
There are 333 billboards or posters and 206 flat-screen TV sets, which can change ads to target specific flights, as BAA pushes every advertising to help generate profit from the terminal, which cost £4.2 billion to build.
The airport has a big population of international business travellers, a group advertisers will pay a premium to reach. Some 27 million people are expected to pass through the new Terminal in the first year and advertising company JC Decaux estimates that 30% of them will earn more than £50,000 a year.
To map where passengers would walk, JC Decaux hired researchers with video cameras to follow people around other terminals as they checked in and waited for flights. The researchers also monitored passengers' pulses. The average business traveller's heart rate was 91 beats per minute, they found, compared with 70 beats for a relaxed person. Kevin Miller, Decaux's head of research on the project, said: ‘Highly aroused people are receptive to messages.'
Typical Terminal 5 visitors will see between 50 and 120 ads, depending on whether they arrive at the airport by car or train and whether they fly domestic or international flights. That's at least one ad every two minutes and 55 seconds, based on the two hours and 26 minutes an average traveller spends at Heathrow.
JC Decaux sells ads in 141 airports around the world and expects Terminal 5 to be its most lucrative individual terminal, measured by revenue per passenger, a spokesman said. So far, it has sold 65% of the ad space in the terminal to brands including Visa, which bought four 30-meter-long billboards overlooking the two security lanes. The billboards were offered for £1.5 million a year.
Another advertiser, InterContinental Hotels, has booked posters near the check-in counters because it wants business travelers to see Crowne Plaza hotels as stylish, just like the new building. The ads will show interiors of Crowne Plaza hotels in London and Geneva.
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