Have you ever thought about where you should advertise when you want to reach everybody? Which method of advertisement will get you the most impressions without the hustle of targeting and picking one demographic among all the possible consumers you could have? Transit advertising could be the answer for you.
Transit advertising refers to the placement of advertisements on buses and other vehicles - public or not! It may include advertises pasted on bus and train terminals as well as passenger-shelters too. It has been an important medium of advertising all over the world and, to some extent, in Bangladesh as well. Tail signs and interior cards on buses are used for advertising by many companies. But transit advertising can be more than that. It can be made completely out-of-the-box and used to attract a vast number of people if you are willing to.
Why is it so amazing, you ask? There is more than one benefit of using transit advertising that one won’t get from other media.
Advertisements put on transportation can be quite difficult to ignore. It is usually within the straight line of view of drivers, riders and passers-by on the road. It can not be turned off or skipped like television or YouTube advertisements. And it’s often pretty fun to look at. Transit advertisements give you the chance to make your advertises really stand out. You can rent the whole side of a bus and put a large advertisement that no one’s going to or even willing to ignore!
One can find many examples of transit advertisements that are creative, attractive and “out there”. One of the perks of this method of advertisement is that you really have your freedom. Once you hire a spot, you can do whatever you want with it. You can paint a whole vehicle with the colors of your brand. Or you can do something even more innovative! One of the mentionable uses of transit advertising is the Absolut Bus Shelters. The brand turned entire bus shelters into flavors of drinks. These are definitely hard to miss and fun to see.
Transit advertisements can largely be divided into three categories -
Whereas interior cards are more catered towards the riders of the vehicle itself, the other two methods are appropriate for reaching to a larger variety of people. Anyone driving or walking by the same road is more than likely to see your advertisement if that’s put on the side of a big vehicle. You can rent one side of the vehicle and put a large advertisement on it. Or you can rent all four sides and wrap it up with your advertisements. This type of ads is well-suited for promoting special events or major sales that you can expect to get brand value from.
Interior cards, even if they are small, provide a larger exposure time to the riders. If you’ve rid the public buses in Dhaka, you are no stranger to them. And if you’ve taken the route more than once, you are quite likely to have memorized the advertises by now. Interior cards take advantage of your boredom while riding a bus by yourself, being stuck in traffic and having nothing better to do but read the adverts spread around you.
Even though it might seem like you can’t target the proper audience in transit advertising, targeting can still be accomplished if you want by picking the vehicle and the route. You can target a younger demographic by placing the ads on school or university buses. Or you can target people from a certain profession by placing your ads on staff buses.
Advertisements placed on the outside of a vehicle are attention-seeking in general. As the medium doesn’t pose any restrictions to location, size or creativity, there is this possibility to reach an otherwise-impossible number of people. All you need is proper designing with attractive colors and a short, catchy phrase and the ad will provide you with high visibility to a large number of people on a daily basis.
Let’s talk a little bit about the “large number” I mentioned. Dhaka is the most densely populated megacity in the world with a population of 14.6 million people. The population of Dhaka has grown more than 10 times since 1971. Although it means a lower grade of living along with low economic productivity, it also means a high number of human assets and higher business potential.
Among these people, only 8.89% work from home. Which means the rest 91.11% route to and from work every weekday. Among which 44.44% take the bus and 22.22% travel by car. And the average travel time of a person to work or school in Dhaka is 57.01 minutes every single day ! [Source] All of these people have the possibility to get exposed to the advertisements put on various vehicles they are either going to ride on or move past.
The potential of transit advertising is endless and it will become as good as you make it to be. And the development in this media has been remarkable. In the past, we were used to seeing painted adverts on buses. Now, Dhaka has seen moving LED billboards and vinyl stickers pasted on cars. And now, for the first time in Bangladesh, you can connect your brand with drivers around the city and create effective and interactive on vehicle advertisements with the help of Sticker Driver Limited.