🚉 NYC Digital Subway Ads. Where they came from and how they work.
We’ve all seen them — the new digital ad screens on the subway. Sometimes they display the train schedule, and other times they show the latest Haagen Dazs ice cream flavor. The city has already deployed and continues to plan for about 50,000 of them across the city. Millions of eyes look at these screens every day.
As I was staring at one last week, I got curious and went on a deep dive. Here is what I found:
The MTA
The MTA is the largest transportation network in North America, serving a population of 15.3 million people in New York City, Long Island, southeastern New York State, and Connecticut. It operates 472 subway stations, 6,407 subway cars, 247 commuter rail stations, 2,429 commuter rail cars, and 1,255 buses. The New York City subway has a daily ridership of approximately 2.4 million, and our bus system has a daily ridership of 1.2 million.
Back in July 2020, the MTA announced the launch of 9,000 screens (and eventually 50000) built on a platform called Mercury that allows location-specific, targeted content. The platform was custom-built by a company called PostLight Launch, which is owned by NTT Data. This platform lets the MTA distribute content to all of their screens. I wasn’t able to find the cost, but it’s safe to assume this was in the multimillion-dollar range to build and support.
https://postlight.com/work/mta
Who Operates Them
The city worked with Outfront Media to set up all the screens. The rough estimate at $2,000 per screen puts the total cost at around $100 million.
Outfront Media manages the ads and marketing for the screens as well, using their ON Smart Media platform. They already manage the 500 physical billboards for the MTA, so it figures they would take on this project as well. You can reach out to them to get ad information and to place your ad. The MTA also provides a policy contact.
The Cost
As for the cost of the ads, this seems harder to find. Since most contracts are probably brokered directly with the brand and agencies, I reached out to a friend who works in the space. All I was able to find was a really large range: $1,500 — $6,500 per display per 4-week period for bus stop ads, and $7,500 — $30,000 for billboard ads.
Super interesting stuff! Maybe we can advertise this newsletter there one day too.
Written by: VimalV5Final
