Photo courtesy Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
The MTA is currently testing out new digital screens that display ads on the sides of buses running on the M23 route. The screens, which use GPS technology to change according to each neighborhood's demographic, are being installed by New York-based ad company Titan Worldwide; the company's website declares that the 12-foot displays "are bright and unavoidable and will enable advertisers to target mass audiences by time of day, block, zip-code, demography and ethnicity." Yay!
As Titan's marketing director tells the Post, "In the morning, we can show Starbucks, and on the way home from work, a Budweiser ad." You can see where this is going; Bugaboo ads for Park Slope, Rohypnol for the Meatpacking District, and in Williamsburg, flashy ads for Neighborhoodies and machetes. The M23's test run currently sports ads for Oreo, Sleepy's, Coca-Cola and Sprite; a spokesman says that if successful, they'll install them on about 200 buses next year. Then in 2010, up in your cerebral cortex! Click through for a video of the Dunkin Donuts bus ad in action.
>Rohypnol for the Meatpacking District,
XD
Whoa! Cool! The future is here!
Figures: the ad looks great, but the side route sign is apparently broken.
Great, just what NYC needs, more mental pollution.
It's bad enough that you can't shut off the TVs in the frickin' cabs.
yeah... I keep getting this ad that tells me to "Move to the offworld colonies... and begin again!" I threw my florescent-tube umbrella at it, the damn thing was driving me nuts.
I am not a brain-washed consumer.
@edward g robincat--while I get that the Eyewitness News (WABC 7) music is their thing which works fine on TV, it's so loud and grating in the cab! Whenever I'm in a cab these days, I immediately shut it off.
Another great idea by the MTA...
Lets bet how soon a sign will be ripped off
the buses and put into a home as a TV.
I say 2 months.
This is just asking for trouble if Popeyes ever buys space.
I wonder how distracting the moving pictures and flashing lights will be to other drivers. Could these cause a few accidents or fender-benders?
I thought the subway side ads were bad but this is worse.
I thought the subway side ads were bad but this is worse.
I wonder how distracting the moving pictures and flashing lights will be to other drivers. Could these cause a few accidents or fender-benders?
I'm not sure this is relevant in nyc since everything is distracting.
I saw them on the CTA in Chicago. They're VERY bright and you can't help but look at them.
and people complain about street art. This sort of thing disgusts me. Since when does the MTA have the right to rape my vision and mind with this sort of crap?
Now I can ignore the bus ads that I never look at digitally. If a digital ad shits in the wood and no one sees it was there ever a digital ad?
The question is, how much revenue is the MTA getting from these new ads? If it's the same amount of money that the agency was getting from the traditional ads (usually for a Lifetime show or ABC radio show) than it's not worth it since the ditigal ads require more maintenance.
"than it's not worth it since the ditigal ads require more maintenance. "
they couldn't possibly require more maintance than paper ads could they?
whatever keeps them from raising the fare.
Radical revenue source! Let's help junk food get better exposure in poorer neighborhoods so we can have more chronic western diet diseases that people can't afford to treat and can be a greater burden on the health care system! Maybe there can be the occasional public service message like "make more babies!"
How long before somebody cries how the ads are racist because they sell McDonalds in Harlem and spring water in midtown or some such shit.
#20: You really think this'll keep them from raising anything?
I just look forward to the first time these get hacked to display something altogether more interesting than ads.
Oh great! More ads to psychologically manipulate the masses into buying crap to make them fat. Really productive.
How about ads promoting healthy eating? But of course that's not the point of Ads in the first place!
#19,
It costs more to fix a ditigal television than it is to change a poster ad. Also, consider that it's likely the screens will be vandalized, cracked, etc. and will need replacement.
@jen chung -- Originally the "off" button actually blanked the screen. But these days when you hit the "off" button the TV stays on. Very annoying when you're trying to rest your eyes after they are bloodshot from a long night out. Admittedly not a problem everyone would share... But sometimes those touchscreens ignore the off request entirely...
It's probably a conspiracy. Mark my words, within two years the "off" buttons will either be completely nonexistent or non-functional in all cabs.
Bring. It. On.
I love advertising of all kinds. I watch it then I immediately go out and buy the product they were shilling. You guys ever eat Big Cheez-its? Awesome.
another tiny step toward blade runner
Holy moly, this is just begging for trouble. I give it one week before the Post has a cover story about some advertising Miller Lite in Harlem.
@edward_g_robincat: the last time i was in a cab, about 2 weeks ago, i had no problem turning the t.v. off. I don't really get what you mean when you say "these days when you hit the "off" button the TV stays on." In every experience I've had, hitting 'off' or 'mute' has turned it off, or muted it, respectively.
jenchungsbra....
Miller Lite in Harlem??
More like Colt45 malt liquor ads.
an accident waiting to happen. heres a good idea, nothing to do with story. if bloomberg wants money for the city put cameras on front of busses and mail tickets to cars in the bus stops.
I agree it doesn't seem a safe thing to do at all. Unless the ads are animated only at the stops, and otherwise remain static.(?)
Either way, if I wanted to have a freaking Times Square wherever I go. I guess I'd hang out there...
Thanks, Gothamist...
Nutty enough for "Nuts in NY".
http://www.nutsinny.com/all-nuts/nut-soup-weekend-im-meeting-beyonce-on-the-gwb
Best,
David @ N.I.N.Y.
The brightness can be modulated downward as they have on many digital billboards after all the complaints. The creepy thing about selling by zip code or whatever is the same toxic issue of liquor ads in distressed neighborhoods were in the eighties (does anyone ever learn?) The best thing to do is go citywide with the ads and not presume that people in the Bronx are more interested in Budweiser than Macys.