By David Burrick, Chief Strategy Officer, Intersection Co.
One of the staples of out-of-home (OOH) advertising in most major American cities is exterior bus advertising. Brands are very comfortable purchasing products on bus exteriors, with clear understanding that buses have massive reach in cities – with high visibility in the urban core and other key neighborhoods that they service. The entire OOH ecosystem has a standard set of products (ranging from kings and tails to full wraps and ultra super kings) and standard measurement (all exterior bus products are measured by Geopath).
But what about the train? In many cities, train exteriors have equal, if not better, visibility than buses in the urban core. Some US cities, including Philadelphia, Minneapolis and Austin, feature light rail vehicles that run in the middle of urban streets. Other large US cities, like Los Angeles and Chicago, have heavy rail trains that are highly visible on trestles that traverse above the city. There is no doubt that these are great media products and many brands have already embraced this medium, committing to marketing campaigns on rail exteriors.
Historically, there is one essential element holding back the scale of exterior train advertising – measurement. Whereas exterior bus advertising is measured by Geopath, allowing marketers to better understand the reach of their campaigns relative to other forms of OOH advertising, exterior rail advertising is not measured by Geopath. Consequently, brands cannot truly measure the impact of their advertising on the outside of rail cars.
At Intersection, we have been determined to solve the measurement problem with rail exteriors. We have partnered with StreetMetrics to develop an impression measurement methodology for trains that provides brands with the same sorts of metrics they are used to getting for buses – namely impressions by product and by train line. We have piloted this exterior rail measurement product in three markets – Chicago, Portland and San Francisco – and are excited to share some of the key takeaways from the research below.
Train Impressions Compare Favorability to Billboards
When compared to other common forms of urban media – buses and billboards – trains often generate more impressions. In Chicago, for example, we examined how many impressions a train wrap garners on a particular line compared to prominent billboards that run along the same line. In many neighborhoods, we found that a train wrap generates far more impressions than the billboard. The CTA’s Brown Line travels through Chicago’s desirable Lincoln Park neighborhood. Our data showed that the average train wrap on the Brown Line generates over 500,000 impressions per week, while prominent billboards in Lincoln Park generate approximately 200,000 impressions in the same period of time.
Trains and Buses Complement One Another
In all markets we have studied, rail exteriors generated more impressions than the same product on a bus exterior in that market. This makes sense. Train cars are often larger than buses, meaning that a full wrap of a rail vehicle is bigger than a wrapped bus. Moreover, the viewsheds of trains are often superior in the urban core than a bus. Given that trains need to run on tracks, the cars are typically set back or elevated from vehicular traffic – meaning there is less obstruction of the ad from trucks and other vehicular traffic when compared to a bus. This does not mean that brands should shift all their spend from buses to trains. Buses often reach many locations that rail cannot reach. Moreover, there are many more buses in a transit system than train cars, so they are essential to hitting reach and frequency goals. However, the data points to a strategy of mixing rail and bus exteriors as part of a unified marketing plan.
Trains See Consistent Impressions Throughout the Week
Given that people associate trains with commuting to the urban core, you might expect to see significant dropoffs in impressions for rail exteriors on weekends vs. weekdays. Interestingly, this is not what we observed on most train lines. While ridership does indeed decrease on the weekends, exterior rail impressions (with the exception of purely underground trains) are correlated with the foot traffic in the neighborhoods where the train runs through – not the amount of people who ride public transit.
Trains are an essential part of urban life and, as the data reveals, they are also an amazing marketing tool for reaching people in cities. Brands can now start to leverage measurement to better understand the impact of advertising on the exterior of rail cars.
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