Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief
At a launch event at Exterion Media’s new offices last night in London, Transport for London (TfL) and Exterion Media officially launched ‘Hello London’ – their commercial media partnership that aims to excite and engage the growing London audience in innovative ways to meet the demands of an ever-changing media landscape and generate essential revenue for London’s transport network.
Back in March of course, TfL selected Exterion Media as its media partner for the world’s largest outdoor advertising contract.
Of note with the new contract is that this is the first time that TfL is providing the opportunity to advertise to one London audience across all TfL rail modes – i.e. all of London Underground, London Overground, Tramlink, Docklands Light Railway, Victoria Coach Station and once it’s operational, the Elizabeth line (many people will still know this as Crossrail). What this means is that it gives advertisers an opportunity to communicate with an audience of over 1.5 billion each year and it is likely to generate GBP 1.1bn for TfL over the next ten years.
Last night Shaun Gregory said that one of his aims was to “declutter existing advertising space across TfL stations and trains and introduce fewer, higher quality advertising assets”. He made mention that the partnership is keen to utilise data and technology to make a customer’s experience more tailored, relevant and contextual and an advertiser’s campaign more effective and lucrative and there were lots of examples at the launch event of folks like BroadSign and other data analytics companies present who are, all no doubt, involved in this. For us in particular this gives us huge opportunities to select new speakers for The DailyDOOH Media Summit in May next year – bottom line, there is a lot that the industry can learn from here.
Some of the transformation includes:
- Hello London icons: Large digital displays with high impact, premium screens, launching this year with Canary Wharf, and with more planned in key locations across the estate.
- Escalator Refresh: A complete refresh-delivering captivating, sequential messaging to consumers. Plans include a mix of next generation Digital Escalator Panels, and Digital Ribbons – which take the DEP to the next level with continuous Ultra HD LCD display running the entire length of the elevator.
- D12: A brand new format for London Underground, premium landscape displays in locations with the best sight-lines.
- D6: Larger portrait formats for existing and new displays across London to deliver higher impact and improved display quality across a broader digital footprint.
- Digital landmarks: Located above escalators on bulkhead walls of select, high footfall, central London stations, digital landmarks will feature LED displays.
- DX3: The next-generation cross track projection – larger full-motion screens with high quality display – provide immersive content in key dwell time locations.
We were also told that the Hello London Data will offer Abi (Audience Behavioural Insights) which is a bespoke insights tool that draws on anonymous, aggregated data from Telefonica UK’s 25 million O2 customers – this of course allows advertisers to better understand and target consumers as they travel across the London Underground (if you are a North American think xAd).
Interestingly the partnership can do ‘International Visitor Targeting’ – identifying when international visitors are at every Zone 1 station which of course opens up opportunities for brands such as tourist attractions and luxury goods to accurately target foreign visitors!
Lastly we’re really pleased – it is a real coup, and something truly fantastic for an International Audience that there is the opportunity for ‘foreigners’ 😉 to learn from what is going here. In a little over two weeks time, John Pizzamiglio , Lead for Advertising Strategy Commercial Development Directorate at Transport for London and one of the major architects of a lot of this, will be explaining why Transport for London’s new partnership with Exterion Media is nothing but remarkable.
He will be presenting exclusively at The DailyDOOH Investor Conference on Weds Oct 26, 2016 in New York. No wonder that folks like Amtrak and the MTA have signed up to listen to him. You can register here.
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