American Airlines runs brand awareness campaign programmatically for first time via Pangaea alliance
American Airlines (AA) has begun trading brand awareness campaigns programmatically having partnered with Pangaea, an alliance of publishers including the Guardian, Financial Times, CNN International, The Economist and Reuters.
Its spring ad campaign, titled ‘Going For Great’ will target Pangaea's business traveller audience segment, and run programmatically across all founding partners, which boast a combined 110 million-strong global audience.
Stephen Davis, international marketing director at American Airlines, said the campaign is aimed at driving awareness of AA’s recent investment in 773 aircraft.
"We have taken advantage of programmatic buying at scale for the last few years in our direct response campaigns, this offering seemed like the ideal time to trial programmatic for our awareness campaigns with no risk,” he said.
“The Pangaea Alliance presented an exciting opportunity for us in our latest campaign. Precision audience targeting in premium, high quality environments is a must for all our campaigns. The titles and placements that Pangaea offer, in addition to the first party data allows us to reach this audience, using high impact formats extremely efficiently with minimal wastage.”
Led by the Guardian, the Pangaea Alliance launched earlier this year letting advertisers buy inventory programmatically via a central exchange powered by Rubicon.
The Guardian has claimed the alliance has had “a fantastic response” from the agency community, saying “highlights include activity from five major agency holding groups from the luxury, travel, finance and distribution sectors, across the UK, EMEA and APAC regions.”
“Since launching Pangaea we have been overwhelmed by the positive response from the industry,” added Tim Gentry, global revenue director, Guardian News and Media. “The deal with American Airlines is an exciting milestone and demonstrates how Pangaea is addressing the demands of the industry for premium programmatic advertising at scale."
The alliance marks one of the first premium, programmatic marketplace pulisher alliances to launch in the UK, with a second led by the Association of Online Publishers, which has rolled out with inventory from the Telegraph. Times Inc and Dennis Publishing.