Gas prices may be falling but the use of public transportation is still rising, and that makes buses that much more attractive to advertisers aiming to be seen by a wide cross-section of Americans, both those riding as passengers and more importantly those walking by or in vehicles.
Static signage on exteriors, especially on the sides, has long been the most popular form of bus advertising, but these days there are more and more options, including full exterior wraps and digital video.
To find out how to get your client’s message in and on buses, read on.
This is one in a Media Life series on buying the new out-of-home venues. They appear weekly.
Fast Facts
What
Advertising in and on buses used for public transportation.
Who
Wherever there's a bus system there's probably a company that arranges advertising on those buses, and a handful of larger companies offer bus advertising across a number of markets. For this article Media Life looked at Clear Channel Outdoor, CBS Outdoor, Titan Worldwide and Transit TV.
How it works
Buses are the original mobile billboards, and their great appeal to advertisers is that they go where the people are, typically along suburban and city streets, and they're seen by everyone, pedestrians, the cop directing traffic, drivers and their passengers and of course the bus passengers as they get on the bus and during their ride.
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Another appeal is that buses travel in areas where other competing outdoor media are either scarce or prohibited, which is the case along many suburban streets.
For exteriors of buses, advertisers have several options. There are the queen- and king-size ads that appear as panels on the sides, and they measure about 30-by-88 inches and 30-by-144 inches.
Advertisers may choose a panel on the back to target drivers of vehicles following behind, and some are also quite large, measuring from 21-by-72 inch to signage that takes up the entire back of the vehicle, measuring 84-by-114 inches.
Other exterior options include complete wraps, where the entire bus becomes a moving ad, or partial wraps. A creative example of a partial wrap was when an insurance company in Amsterdam earlier this year wrapped the rear to make it look like it was the bus’s front, complete with a driver whose head was turned to look to the back of the vehicle.
The effect was to give the impression that the bus was backing up through busy Amsterdam streets--cause enough for any driver to think about accidents and insurance to cover them.
New to the market are digital video screens on the sides of buses. These can run a series of ads that are static, animated or feature full-motion video. Advertisers can target by time of day, and GPS technology allows for targeting by location as well.
Static advertising inside buses includes the cards that appear in panels between the roof and side windows, as well as ads on the ceiling itself.
In some larger markets there are digital video screens inside buses that run a mixture of content and advertising.
Markets
Advertising on buses is available in 80 to 85 percent of the top 100 markets on about 36,500 buses, according to the Outdoor Advertising Association of America.
Numbers
There were some 5.9 billion U.S. bus trips taken in 2006, the most recent year available, according to the American Public Transportation Association. In Los Angeles, 61 percent of bus commuters spend more than an hour on a bus each day, according to a study by Arbitron, and 58 percent ride a bus at least four days a week.
In the third quarter of this year, overall ridership on public transit was up 6.5 percent across the U.S., according to the American Public Transportation Association, and bus ridership was up even more, by 7.2 percent.
How it is measured
Ads on the insides of buses are measured by using passenger counts. There is no standard measurement for exterior bus ads, although audiences are sometimes estimated using population, traffic and geographic data.
What product categories do well
Categories that work well are entertainment, including movies and TV, real estate, restaurants, insurance, banking and retail.
Demographics
Exterior bus ads are considered a mass media, reaching a wide audience, but there is some targeting that can be done by neighborhoods buses travel through.
In Chicago, 22 percent of bus riders are age 18-24, 36 percent 18-34 and 67 percent 18-49, according to Scarborough Research. Hispanics make up 19 percent of bus ridership and African Americans 31 percent, with Caucasians accounting for the remaining 43 percent. Women make up 61 percent of bus riders.
Making the buy
Clear Channel Outdoor handles interior and exterior ads on buses in 12 markets. Prices vary depending on the market and size of the ad, but one fully wrapped bus in San Francisco costs $5,500 for four weeks.
Titan Worldwide offers bus ads in nine markets, including New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. King-size (30-by-144 inch) posters on one bus in New York cost $1,785 per week for campaigns running between four and 25 weeks.
Transit TV has digital video screens inside buses in Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Orlando and Milwaukee. Pricing varies by market and length of spot (15, 30 or 60 seconds), but CPMs range between $2 and $5.
Who’s already on buses
Bus advertisers include Remax, Coca-Cola, Best Buy, the CW, Oxygen, HBO, Dockers, A&E, Snickers and McDonald’s.
What they’re saying
"We're a non-profit and we like to ask how people heard about us. The bus seems to be the most popular. People say to me all the time, 'I see your bus everywhere.'"--Jeri Kavanaugh, director of Milwaukee Habitat for Humanity Restore
Web site info
Clear Channel Outdoor
http://www.ClearChannelOutdoor.com
Titan Worldwide
http://www.TitanOutdoor.com
Transit TV
http://www.TransitTV.com
CBS Outdoor
http://www.CBSOutdoor.com
