Cab Advertising: OOH on a new gear
By Bhawana Anand - March 11, 2014
A fleeting message should work well in a scenario where the audience only have fleeting seconds to register a brand presence. This seems to be the driving thought behind transit advertising. Indeed, with traditional OOH space getting saturated more and more and more brands are looking at alternative OOH options such as transit communication, particularly cab advertising, to connect with the audience. Here's a look at how and the inherent challenges.
A recent OOH industry report shows that transit format has empowered the outdoor medium enabling it to grow and sustain itself in a highly challenging and competitive space. It says that Transit Media has grown at a brisk pace of 13.9 percent surpassing the projected growth of 10 percent in 2013, out of which cab-advertising has been the most flourishing format.
Driving Impact
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Evolution of the medium
Speaking of evolution, one important element that has added to the medium's appeal is interactivity with the boom of interactive screens inside the cars a few years ago. Says Sakshi, "Anything that is audio visual and moving, can't be ignored. Lot of things can happen here as there are lots of interaction points which other OOH medium don't have. Also, on a live basis, we can update our clients as to how many times their ad appeared, the eye impressions, the duration etc.â€
According to Prasenjeet Bagchi, Chief Marketing Officer, TabCab, however, "This is not very scalable, since advertisers are not interested in them as yet. In future this scenario might change. Interactivity can be brought in through NFC, Wi-Fi, and Mobile etc. in and out of the cabs, but we still don't have any requirement so we have not tried.â€
Talking about the evolution of the medium and the factors affecting it, Siddharth of Meru Cabs says, "Cab-advertising has evolved in the last three years and we are trying to evaluate the whole possibilities which can be made. But the issue with in-cab screens is that the whole model is not viable. Currently cab advertising does the whole matrix with the number of trips that a particular cab makes and the number of people who are outside the road. But the screens are made for a person sitting inside and the screen works like a TV channel which runs on the basis of TRP. Therefore, there is no TRP for these screens and they don't work. But if we get the TV or screen media on top of the taxi like it happens in LA then it can ensure that the rest of the audience on the roads are also viewing that screen and the ads running on it.â€
Content is Crucial
The success of interactive communication in cab communication also depends on its content. Apparently a lot of cab screens didn't work out due to irrelevant content. Says Srinivas Bendapudi, of Vuego Incab Entertainment by Parinishtaa Media Ventures, "To attract eyes, the content should entertain the traveller with a bouquet of offerings and the ads should be non intrusive and non abusive and there should be periodic refreshing of the content. The ads must be robust, transparent and supported by technological innovation to generate opportunities for brands to interact with prospects.â€
Exterior Options
Given the limitations with inside screens, external branding is an important factor in this medium with branded doors and backsides. But according to Siddharth, there are constraints here too from the brand marketers' side. "We are in talks with a few brands for this kind of printing. But the issue is that the brand managers feel that cab-advertising is just a small part of the campaign and it can spoil the rest of the campaign happening on other medium such as TV, print or conventional OOH. They don't want to do just 3D or 4D on cabs when the entire 360 degree campaign is happening normally.â€
However, Prasenjeet from TabCab believes that the issue here is more to do with cost as 3D rendering is still very expensive because of monopolistic situation on the creative front and that advertisers would go for it if there was reduction in the rendering cost.
The Experiential Fuel
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"The medium is evolving it and we have got lot of FMCGs who typically have the most interest in doing innovations. They are coming up with lot of interesting ideas. However, the medium has its own limitations and some ideas are too impractical to be implemented. For instance, one of the advertisers wanted the driver to make the tea in the car and serve it to the passenger which was kind of impossible,†says Sakshi.
According to Prasenjeet, the issue is also to do with scale in terms of offering a brand experience, "Experiential is possible but with limited numbers. What I mean is it cannot be deployed in large number of cabs, and can happen only with limited numbers of cabs. Since all fleet cabs are driven by non-salaried drivers, who pay rent for the car and run the cab as their own businesses, they are beyond control and hence the logistics required for experiential becomes tough.â€
The Road Ahead
So what can take this medium forward? Well, this depends on what the brands themselves want from the medium. For some like Vardhman, it could be in-cab radio jingles, while others like Shakti Bhog would want to look at offering product sampling inside the cabs. But for the most part, brands are still looking at interactivity in this medium. Says Amar from Tata Docomo, "In future, we would like to see higher interactivity. For instance, a greeting or welcome message can be played while a passenger boards or de-boards the cab which can be associated with sponsored ads. I would like to see some kind of screens inside the car with entertaining content. I would also like to do free Wi-Fi sampling inside the cabs for TATA Photon. The cabs can be made Wi-Fi enabled which passengers can be used and experience the speed and usage of my product.â€
Agrees Deepa from eBay India, "Cabs offer marketers two very crucial elements -- first, a ready base of urban individuals with high disposable income and second, the most priceless commodity - time. In the future, we would definitely see marketers leverage these attributes through mobile devices to offer personalized engagement opportunities. With cars being launched with WiFi connections, we can surely expect this in the near future.â€
Tags :
Raghu Khanna
CashurDrive
Meru Cabs
Tata Docomo
Kellog’s
Ambi Pur
eBay India
Srinivas Bendapudi
Vuego Incab Entertainment by Parinishtaa Media Ventures
Amar Saraswat
Deepa Thomas
Surinder Rana
Shakti Bhog
CA Jaideep Aggarwal
Vardhman
Siddarth Pahwa
Sakshi Vij
Carzonrent
Prasenjeet Bagchi
TabCab
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