VoiSmart
Case study
Airport transportation
inPiazza Guest WiFi
Venice Marco Polo Airport: from Guest WiFi to advertising channel with an average of 321,000 impressions per campaign
Who is Gruppo SAVE
Gruppo SAVE is the airport management company that operates the Venice Marco Polo, Treviso, Verona, and Brescia airports.
Venice Marco Polo Airport is Italy's third-largest intercontinental gateway, with over 9 million passengers passing through in the past year.
Gruppo SAVE
Airport transportation
Venice, Treviso, Verona, and Brescia airports · 9M+ passengers/year
inPiazza Guest WiFi, Proximity Marketing, Location Analytics
The challenge
Every year, more than 9 million passengers pass through Venice Marco Polo Airport. That's an enormous volume of traffic, and it also represents a valuable commercial opportunity: people waiting for their flight, stationary inside the terminal, with time to fill and open to discovering products and services. The challenge is reaching them the right way.
Traditional advertising — billboards, digital screens, posters — suffers from a structural problem: it only captures attention if the passenger happens to walk past it, with no way to target the audience or precisely measure effectiveness. To build an effective advertising channel inside the airport terminal, the message needs to reach the right person, at the right time, in the right place.
Guest WiFi, which passengers actively connect to while they wait, is the ideal touchpoint. Turning it into a measurable, profiled advertising channel means converting waiting time into a sales opportunity for the retailers operating inside the airport.
An excellent and cost-effective Wi-Fi service is not only essential for passengers but also helps to improve the airport’s ranking in the ACI World rankings.
Key requirements:
- Create a measurable digital advertising channel inside the terminal, as an alternative to traditional posters and signage
- Target advertising messages based on the passenger's terminal area, time of day, and language
- Give the airport's retailers flexible campaign tools they can configure on their own
- Maintain a smooth, high-quality WiFi experience for passengers, without letting the advertising component degrade it
- Measure the performance of every campaign with reliable impression data
The solution
At Venice Marco Polo Airport, the inPiazza platform combined an efficient WiFi service with advertising tools delivered directly through the access portal, optimizing the user experience while turning passenger traffic into a commercial asset.
The mechanism is simple and effective: every passenger who connects to the airport's WiFi from their smartphone sees, on the login page, an ad relevant to their context. Not a generic ad, but a message that is fully customizable based on three key variables:
Location within the terminal
The ad is tailored to the physical area where the passenger is located (gate, retail area, waiting lounge, etc.), matching the message to the nearest offer.
Time of day
Time-based scheduling makes it possible to adapt the message to peak hours or to the time slots when a given service is most relevant.
Language
Localized messages let retailers tap into the linguistic and cultural nuances of their international customer base.
Solution Components
- inPiazza Guest WiFi: WiFi access via captive portal. Every connection generates a measured advertising impression.
- Splash Advertising: targeted ads on the login page, profiled by area, time, and language. A direct advertising channel for terminal retailers.
- Proximity Marketing: contextual messages triggered by the passenger’s physical location. Maximum relevance between the ad and the commercial opportunity.
- Location Analytics: analysis of passenger flows across the different areas of the terminal. Data that supports both advertising decisions and operational management.
How it works in practice
Every retailer at the airport can set up dedicated campaigns, with distinct creative and messaging by area and time slot, without interfering with the passenger’s browsing experience. The WiFi service remains the priority; advertising is integrated at the point of access and doesn’t interrupt the connection. In early 2023, 3 separate campaigns were launched to promote the sale of specific products, with measured and verifiable results.
The results
With over 2.5 million recorded accesses and an average of 6,500 impressions per day, Venice Marco Polo Airport's WiFi has proven to be a high-frequency digital touchpoint, one of the few airport advertising surfaces with a certain, measurable exposure metric. The 3 campaigns launched in early 2023 generated an average of 321,000 impressions each, engaging a qualified audience already present inside the terminal. The success of these first campaigns has sparked interest from other retailers at the airport, who are now ready to develop similar strategies to reach new customers.
| Area of Impact | Outcome |
|---|---|
|
Traffic volume |
2.5 million connections to the WiFi service |
|
Advertising performance |
An average of 321,000 impressions per campaign – 3 campaigns launched in early 2023 |
|
Commercial interest generated |
New airport retailers are interested in launching similar campaigns following the initial results |
|
Passenger experience |
High-quality WiFi maintained: the advertising component did not degrade connectivity |
Voice of the customer
Why VoiSmart
Measurable advertising where traditional signage can’t reach
every WiFi access is a certified impression, with precise, transparent campaign data.
Targeting by location, time, and language:
message relevance increases the conversion rate and retailer satisfaction.
No compromise on the passenger experience:
the advertising component is integrated at the moment of WiFi access, without interrupting browsing.
Scalable across all of Gruppo SAVE:
the same platform logic can be replicated at the group’s other airports (Treviso, Verona, Brescia) without re-engineering the infrastructure
Location Analytics for data-driven decisions:
passenger flow and behavior data inform both advertising campaigns and the airport’s operational decisions.
Do you have any more questions?
If you haven’t found the answer you were looking for here, our team is here to help. Please contact us for further information or personalised support: we’ll be happy to help you sort out any queries.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) about this project
How is Ad relevance ensured for passengers at an international airport with such a diverse user base?
The inPiazza platform makes it possible to configure every campaign across three simultaneous dimensions: the physical area of the terminal (gate, retail, waiting lounge), the time slot, and the language of the passenger’s device. A duty-free ad might be shown in English to international passengers in the departures area, and in Italian to domestic passengers in that same area during a different time slot. This level of granularity reduces the waste typical of traditional signage advertising.
How are the results of a WiFi Advertising campaign at an airport actually measured?
Every WiFi access via the captive portal generates an impression tracked by the platform. Data is available by campaign, by area, and by period: number of impressions, views by time of day, geographic performance within the terminal. The 3 campaigns launched in early 2023 at Marco Polo Airport produced an average of 321,000 impressions each, a precise figure, not an estimate.
Is the WiFi advertising system only available for large airports, or for smaller ones too?
The model scales regardless of traffic volume. At large hubs like Venice Marco Polo (9M+ passengers/year), it generates a high volume of impressions; at Gruppo SAVE’s smaller airports (Treviso, Verona, Brescia), the same platform can be activated by adapting campaign volumes to the available traffic, while keeping the same targeting and measurement logic unchanged.
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