Gail Chiasson, North American Editor
“Our relationships have moved from transactional and confrontational to a partnership that is the most highly valued of its type in the world,” John Pizzamiglio, lead for advertising strategy commercial development directorate at Transport for London, told the audience at the DailyDOOH Media Summit, held May 17, 2016, at BAFTA in London.
“We have many transit points at which to reach our audience and we now have a world class advertising estate,” he said, as he went on to discuss how Transport for London is being transformed with its partners.
Our readers will remember that Exterion Media was awarded the Transport for London tube advertising (ie. subway/metro) contract in March, 2016, whilst JCDecaux was awarded the Transport for London Bus Shelter contract back in August 2015.
“With our extended network, we can offer an enhanced customer experience; insight through the data we receive; and value for funding,” says Pizzamiglio, who joined Transport for London in 2012 after a career in France and England with BAA and others, often in advertising sales roles.
“We’ve been moving from the security of a minimum guaranteed payment to a higher risk, higher reward revenue share model. And we’re putting significant investment into our infrastructure – largely over the next two years.”
Pizzmiglio went on to illustrate the moves that the company has been making, accompanied by a series of detailed screens. Among these he noted obtaining more and more insight through data. TfL is constantly getting a 360 degree view of consumer behaviour “that makes every proposition more valuable.”
TfL, with its partners is replacing old, digital displays, adding more advertising into certain stations, and introducing more premium, high-impact digital advertising. It is also converting some backlights to digital and removing some old poster displays.
“The environment in the tube is very important for us,” said Pizzamiglio.
The combination of the audience scale that the transport system offers combined with the depth of potential data sources creates a real opportunity for TfL. And the plan for the use of TfL data (aggregated and anonymized) by TfL and its partners is expected to demonstrate ROI to advertisers.
We noticed that TfL is helping to facilitate two interesting projects to benefit Londoners: Media for Good, a formal support for community causes and organizations to access advertising at affordable rates; and Media for Equity: an innovative investment model that provides start-ups with media space in return for a revenue/equity share.
In the future, among its plans, TfL will be launching additional premium iconic sites. In 2017, there will also be new and expanded small format screens in more than 100 stations, and in 2018, there will be a network of digital escalator ribbons, and above the actual escalator entranceways – Digital Landmarks. It now wants to be seen as a one-stop shop for brands.
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