Has The London Digital Taxi Cab Race Been Won?
Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief
In alphabetical order (should we be accused of any favouritism); BrightMove Media, Cabtivate Networks Ltd., Cabvision, EyeTease Media, Metropolis Digital Media, Taxi Media (acquired by Verifone in September 2011), Ubiquitous Taxi Advertising and VeriFone Systems Inc. have all played / wished to play in the UK (London specifically in almost all cases) with digital screen advertising either in or on top of a London (Hackney carriage or otherwise) Taxi.
As you can imagine, far too many, and with so many of them having no clue as to what they are doing, what the technical and legal needs are, how difficult it all is, etc. etc. for the majority of media buyers it has all been a bit of a mess – one that they would rather avoid.
The obvious winner in that list ought to be Verifone – a company we thought a few years ago, would GLOBALLY be one of the really big players in digital out of home. Unfortunately, management changes at the very top of the media division, a rather rigid and unwieldy corporate structure and a lack of real innovation soon put paid to that.
If one of those (relative) ‘newcomers’ above was to have, let’s say, 350 taxi screens by the end of the year you may not be surprised to see one clear leader emerge. We still don’t like their screen technology but their software solution is sound and with them currently chatting to the aggregator-that-is-on-fire at the moment in Europe then we think they have a real chance to build a solid business based on what they have.
Watch this space as rumours are that sometime next week will be the big announcement.
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