Your client's ad
in New York taxis
The big new thing is geo- and time-of-day targeting
By Diego Vasquez
Jan 10, 2011
New York taxis certainly aren't a new medium for out-of-home advertising but they do have some cool new technology that makes them that much more attractive to advertisers.
More and more taxis are being outfitted with GPS devices that allow advertisers to target passengers with different messages depending on where they are in the city and what time of day it is.
The ads appear on digital screens in passenger compartments.
Taxis also offer more traditional advertising opportunities such as static signs on their tops. By next year these will likely have geo-targeting and time-of-day capabilities too as those screens go digital as well.
To find out how to get your client in and on taxis, read on.
This is one in a Media Life series on buying out-of-home venues. They appear weekly.
Fast Facts
What
Advertising in and on top of taxis in New York City.
Who
Two companies, Show Media and VeriFone Transportation Systems, handle taxi-top ads in New York. VeriFone also handles the bulk of digital advertising inside cabs on its own screens as well as those from Creative Mobile Technologies.
How it works
There are two main ways to advertise on taxis: inside the cabs on digital touch screens and outside the cabs on taxi-top displays.
Screens inside the cab measure 10 inches diagonally and are used by riders for credit card payment. While the cab is in motion the bulk of the screen runs a 14- to 18-minute video loop of news, weather and sports content.
About 30 percent of the video loop is dedicated to advertising.
The remaining portion of the screen works as an internet browser, allowing riders to surf through sponsored content, such as sports news from ESPN or entertainment news from People magazine.
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This portion of the screen features clickable banner advertising, and advertisers can also set up microsites or interactive games to keep passengers occupied during their ride.
Touch screen advertising is highly targetable, both by area and time of day, thanks to GPS technology.
In the morning hours, a restaurant might run ads for breakfast specials that air in taxis dropping fares off in its neighborhood. It might then switch to ads promoting its lunch and dinner specials later in the day.
Broadway theaters might target ads at cabs picking up rides at city hotels known to cater to out-of-towners in for a weekend of shows.
Riders do have the option of turning off the screens during their ride and roughly 15 percent to 20 percent do.
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But because pricing is based on actual impressions, much like internet advertising, advertisers aren't paying for people who aren't watching. If the screen is left on, there's a good chance the rider is paying attention.
The other form of taxi-top advertising remains traditional static signs, but a transition to digital will begin soon, perhaps as early as mid-2012. Those signs will have the same geo- and daypart-targeting capabilities as the touch screens, and they will be seen by other drivers and pedestrians in addition to cab riders.
Markets
New York City
Numbers
There are 13,000 taxis in New York City, and each averages 42 fares per day. The average number of passengers is 1.4 per trip.
How it is measured
For digital ads inside the cab, drivers report the number of fares they had that day. This is measured against the number of hours the screen was on during that driver's shift. Total impressions are tracked by the touch screen's ad server software.
For traditional taxi-top ads, street traffic and pedestrian data is used to estimate impressions.
What product categories do well
Frequent taxi advertisers include retail, restaurants, new media, TV networks, banking, telecommunications, consumer packaged goods and computers.
Demographics
Sixty-nine percent of digital taxi ad viewers in NYC are adults 18-49, according to Scarborough Research data provided by VeriFone. Fifty-one percent are female, 49 percent male.
Fifty-seven percent of the digital audience has an average annual household income of $75,000 or greater, and 49 percent have a college or post-graduate degree.
For traditional taxi displays the audience is 64 percent 18-49, and also 51 percent female and 49 percent male.
Forty-one percent have an annual household income of $75,000 or greater, and 44 percent have a college or post-graduate degree.
Making the buy
Because they're digital and controlled from a central location, ads on screens inside the cab can be up within a day, although five days to a week is the preferred lead time. CPMs range from $18 to $30, depending on how targeted the ad is.
Lead time for static taxi-top ads is longer, typically two to three weeks. But CPMs are much lower, around $1.
Who’s already using taxi ads
Recent or current taxi advertisers include Microsoft, Chase, New York Yankees, AOL, ESPN, Citibank, Samsung, HSBC and Yahoo.
What they’re saying
“Inside the cab the biggest value points are it's interactive, you're captive, it's full sight, sound and motion, and it's accountable--you're only paying for what gets seen. Outside the cab it's all about efficiency. Cabs go where people are, so you're getting lots of impressions at a low rate." –
Chris Polos, vice president of media at VeriFone
Web site info
Show Media
http://www.showmedia.com
VeriFone
http://www.verifone.com
Creative Mobile Technologies
http://creativemobiletech.com
Digital Dispatch Systems
http://www.digital-dispatch.com
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