What Are The Pros and Cons of Leveraging Bus Advertising?

According to Transport for London (TFL), in London alone, there are 19,000 bus stops and approximately 700 routes served by some 8000 buses daily. So, the potential for Out-of-Home bus advertising campaigns to achieve high audience reach is always there. 

Bus advertisements are one way of getting people talking about a brand. Motorists, shoppers, commuters, and anyone going about their daily business often cannot help themselves from glazing up at bus advertising campaigns. 

At Drovo, we are a team of Out-of-Home transit media advertising specialists. Here we give our insights into bus advertising. Continue reading to learn more about the pros and cons of leveraging bus advertising in OOH campaigns. 

On-bus Advertising vs Bus Stop Advertising

Let’s first make one thing clear, on-bus advertising differs from bus stop advertising. On-bus advertising is when ads are displayed on moving buses, whereas bus stop advertisements are displayed at bus stops (or ‘shelters’). 

Bus stop ads can be moving digital billboard screens that change or rotate or static printed billboards. You will also find interactive bus stop ads with touchscreen technology. 

The Pros of Leveraging Bus Advertising

Constant Presence

Given that in major cities, some buses circulate 24 hours a day, another bonus of bus advertisements is the constant presence they provide. Some people work night shifts for instance, and they therefore may be out and about and exposed to Out-of-Home campaigns at more unusual times, and bus advertisements can help you reach such catch-all audiences. 

Targeting campaigns at a specific customer age group, such as 11-16 year olds? Well, a large number of children travel to school via bus and your constant presence on the side of buses will mean they see your ads. 

The Mobile Aspect of Bus Advertising

Cities are places where people are constantly on the move. Thereby, a benefit of on-bus advertising is the mobile element of it meaning you are able to reach larger audience numbers. A bus driving down the street with an eyecatching advertisement on the side can capture the attention of passersby and leave an impression on them.

At Drovo, our collection of wrapped black cabs and taxis also have this mobile aspect to them. When you opt for bus advertising, you will be getting a printed on-bus billboard that you cannot change once it is rolled out and on the road. 

Want to move with your audience and create custom ads that you can view the progress of at any time thanks to our live vehicle tracking dashboard? Then Drovo’s taxi campaigns are an excellent option for you. 

Increase Your Brand Awareness

Want to make more people aware of your brand and your products? No doubt having large bus advertisements spread across has the potential to work wonders for your brand awareness. Therefore, another benefit of Out-of-Home bus advertising campaigns is their ability to enhance your brand awareness. 

Enables You to Target Busy High Streets

In the UK, we have plenty of busy high streets full of retail outlets that buses pass through every day. By running bus advertisements, you will be able to focus on targeting shoppers’ eyeballs as they leave stores on crowded high streets. 

The Cons of Leveraging Bus Advertising 

Lack of Transparency Over the Progress of Your Bus Advertising Campaigns

When are running an Out-of-Home campaign, you will want to be able to track its progression accurately. How is it performing? How many impressions is it getting? Unfortunately, there has been a lack of transparency for Out-of-Home advertising campaigns for many years. 

That’s where we at Drovo come in! With our taxi advertising campaigns, you will have access to our intuitive live dashboard provides you with useful daily data, including real time impressions in exact locations and the miles driven by each vehicle in the campaign. You can check in on this data whenever you like to assess how well your taxi campaigns are performing and in which locations. 

We are the first provider to offer tailor-made measurable OOH taxi campaigns. Want to make an impact in a specific borough of London? We can help you do that at Drovo.

We are proud of how our live dashboard enhances transparency and accountability for brands and agencies. 

Inability to Connect With More Specific Target Audiences 

You can use more general data such as government records to help you roll out ads for products in different locations. However, this data could be limited and outdated. 

At Drovo, our shadowfencing feature helps you hyper target audiences in taxi campaigns. This feature targets specific ads to individuals in close proximity to one of our wrapped taxis, and it enables you to continue the conversation with your target audience by displaying ads on their mobile devices.

When on-street audiences have left a taxi’s geofence mobile virtual boundary, they can be retargeted by mobile device ads through shadowfencing (provided they have ‘opted in’).

Have you been searching for a way to amplify your impact on outdoor audiences by bridging the gap between digital marketing and Out-of-Home? Adding the shadowfencing feature to your taxi advertising campaigns with us will help you achieve that! 

Bus Advertising Doesn’t Always Lead to More Sales and New Customers

Yes, if you advertise a brand on the side of a London bus, plenty of members of the public should see it throughout the course of the day. But the impressions you generate through bus advertising, no matter how high they are, won’t necessarily lead to a rise in sales or a surge in new customers. 

We do hope that you have enjoyed reading about the various pros and cons of leveraging bus advertising campaigns. At Drovo, we operate the UK’s largest committed network of carbon-neutral media, with 2,000+ drivers. We are growing at an impressive rate with our unique dashboard tracking feature for taxi campaigns, which explains the recent series A funding round we secured.