Posts Tagged ‘mobile digital advertising’
Taxi cab owner operators can earn an extra income by advertising local businesses to pairs in their cab with minimum investment.
Everyone is always looking to maximise their earnings, taxi cab owners are no different. Using digital signage technology a cab owner can now offer advertising opportunities for local businesses for a small investment that has a fast and very profitable return on its investment.
The main advantage is that the solution needs no technical knowledge, as the advertisers will supplier all the content for the ads, now all an owner had to do is to get a digital signage headrest, these are available in a range of sizes but let us look at the entry level units first.
A basic 7” advertising headrest has an LCD screen with a media player built into the headrest, now to add the content for advertising all anyone has to do is copy the files your advertisers gave you onto a flash drive and insert the storage device into the headrest and this will update the ads.
Right, here is the maths, the headrests are available for around $400, but remember these headrests can hold up to 100 three minute adverts and you can charge $100 per month per advert, now imagine how much you would earn per month.
Month one would generate $10,000 (100 advertisers each paying $100 per month) minus the cost of the headrest $400 gives a profit in the first month of $9,600, then the following months are all profit. Over a year the potential is there to generate an extra $119,400 for an initial investment of $400.
This is not the end of it, with the high end 3G taxi headrests, these offer additional features such as sending discount vouchers to your cell phone, as well as using GPS to pinpoint your location and surrounding advertisers, making it ideal for any major city taxi company when lots of visitors come through the city.
No a 3G digital advertising headrest will cost in the region of $799, but these will store up to 150 advertisers and they can upgrade their own content through the 3G network so the taxi cab owner does not have to do anything. They can also pay an additional cost for being “featured” on the GPS map routing giving them maximum coverage on the advertising system.
Using the 3G taxi headrest you could boost your extra income depending on your location, charging more for a city location. The potential is to earn an extra $179,000 per year for a minimal investment whilst at the same time being seen by your passengers as providing a valuable service.
Who in this would could turn an extra $100,000 per year down for very little effort and expense, I for one would certainly see how many advertising spots I could sell to local businesses before I committed to purchasing the hardware, but the hardware is out there and developing every day. A couple of cab owners could get together and offer a deal to local businesses creating their own in cab advertising network, the more people that can see the adds, the more you can charge!
As well as headrests, they also offer a range of outdoor LCD enclosure for protecting outdoor advertising systems and monitor enclosure for factory information systems.
Over many years taxi cabs have used different mediums to advertise third party ads to their passengers as well as pedestrians who see the cabs on a day to day basis.
Taxi cabs throughout the world are used by millions of people, they are seen by many more people, so some entrepreneur owners realised they had a way of offering an advertising solution to the masses, using some real advertising “real estate” that was otherwise a wasted opportunity.
So we will look at the most relevant advertising methods used to create an extra income stream for the cab companies.
Taxi’s internal signs.
When you hail a cab and enter into the rear section you enter an area that can be a marketing professionals dream, from here you exposed to advertising in multiple types of methods from business cards placed in front of each passengers seat to digital signage headrests.
Digital signage headrests come in two formats, the first being standard electronic headrests and the second being interactive, let us look as these more closely.
Before the electronic boom, print ruled the advertising world and here taxi cabs were paid to put business cards and flyers into the rear passenger compartment of their cab, so if a passenger was interested in the product or service they would take the card or flyer with them and the driver would replace it before he picked up his next faire.
Standard digital signage headrests – these fit into the front seats and can have either an inbuilt media player or an external player were the content is stored, this is looped and can include video, images and even audio.
Interactive digital signage headrests – these also fit into the front seats but these encourage the passenger to interactive, by selecting categories they are particularly interested in. For example if a visitor is being taken from the airport to their hotel and are considering what to do whilst in New York, they could check out what is on at the theatres and decide on which show to see whilst on their journey to their accommodation. This can enhance the passenger’s experience that would otherwise be a “normal” journey.
Making it a win-win situation as the taxi companies get paid for using their “real estate” and the advertising agencies have a real opportunity to promote third party ads.
Taxi Top Digital Advertising – without compromise.
“Manufactured in the UK – supported throughout the World”.
From the very first day that a cab had a sign on it’s roof, this caught the attention of potential customers, people could see if the cab was available for hire or not at a glance, so if the taxi sign was lit it was available if the light was off, the driver was either off duty or taking a faire. Now let us look at the new options out there.
Taxi’s external ads.
These range from printing large signs these decals are adhered to the cab and cover the cabs sides (mainly the doors) as this is what passengers and pedestrians see most.
Roof top signs – these started life as a printed sign that is then mounted in to a vinyl or polycarbonate mounting frame that is attached to the roof of the cab, when the ad needs changing, the housing would be removed and the print replaced with a new more updated ad, it would be re-assembled and the cab is good to go.
Taxi Cab Topper – these can utilise new technology, such as stretch screen displays, that are mounted in a special protective enclosure, this case provides all the internal electronics with protection from the weather to children throwing snow balls at the screens.
These taxi cab digital signage enclosures accommodate two screens up to 32” in a 17:6 screen ratio in a back to back position, a solid state media player is stored between the screens and mounted on anti vibration mounts, these absorb all the knocks and bangs from the streets of New York.
The media player stores the content on them and can be updated wirelessly through 3G and GPS networks. The images are static when the vehicle is moving and video plays when the vehicle is stopped.
Now this is being viewed as the next level of digital signage and is a marketing departments opportunity of the decade. As the ad agency can sell ad slots on the signage whilst paying the taxi companies to let their roof space.
Taxi Top Digital Signs – without compromise.
Manufactured in the UK – supported throughout the World.