They’re something we walk past, drive past and ride past often, and 90% of the UAE’s population now live within 5 minutes of one.
The reason that bus stops represent a popular form of advertising is that they are an ideal way to gain mass exposure. Regional and national campaigns are possible with the ability to achieve mass exposure through both regional and national campaigns. It will come as no surprise therefore that bus stop advertising is one of the most popular forms of out of home advertising that we deliver, with this form of advertising both highly effective and affordable for many businesses.
With a superb reputation in the industry, our company has been providing high-quality marketing solutions for local and national clients alike. We can design and print any number of products to get your business noticed and bring you more business. If you’re interested in bus stop ads, we can help you out!
What is Bus Shelter Advertising?
Bus shelters are used to display advertisements in the form of posters, digital displays, or benches. Bus shelter advertising is appealing because it allows advertisers to reach a large audience and keep advertisements visible for extended periods of time. Popular options include:
- Standard poster panels – 4 sheets and 6 sheets as discussed.
- Back-lit posters – round-the-clock and round-the-year advertising with posters that stand out in the evening and winter months.
- Digital advertising posters – which allows for frequent and swift changing and adapting of messaging, and can be done on a full-time or rotational basis.
- Take-over – the opportunity to fully brand a bus shelter, right down to the seats! With this option, there’s an opportunity for advertisers to create a memorable brand presence with bus shelter advertising.
- Bus bench – benches can be branded and coloured to carry any message that you like.
For more information about any of these advertising options, please contact us today and we’ll be glad to discuss them with you and provide free quotes..
What Are The Benefits of Bus Shelter Advertising?
We believe the main two benefits of bus stop advertising are:
- Mass exposure – Bus shelters offer advertisers a large and varied audience of potential customers. As people wait at bus stops, they are joined by those walking past, those disembarking buses and those riding or driving past. This makes the shelter an effective and cost-efficient way to promote nearly any service, product or company. Though not usually considered as an advertising medium, a shelter advertisement achieves levels of mass exposure that other outdoor channels cannot match.
- Hits a cross-section of society – One of the other main benefits of bus advertising is its ability to reach both a wide audience and some notoriously difficult socio-economic segments, such as older people and lower-income groups. Bus travel has become a popular choice for older people in particular because they can receive free journeys on public transport, but it’s also cheaper for lower-income audiences.
Cost of Bus Shelter Advertising
Advertising at bus shelters can be an effective way to reach potential customers, with most companies finding that the costs are more affordable than other types of outdoor advertising. The cost of advertising at a bus shelter will depend on several factors:
- The area – regions with high footfall (and therefore high exposure) are more expensive than those in more rural, less busy areas.
- The number of sites – purchasing multiple bus stop placements across a wide location e.g. town or city centres, will be more expensive.
- The length and duration of your bus stop or bus shelter advertising campaign – e.g. 2 weeks, 1 month, 6 months etc. will also affect the cost. The longer a bus ad campaign runs the more expensive it will be.
We’ve got you covered. The complexity of buying media space and managing the process is one of the biggest reasons people hire us to do this for them. There are numerous nuances that can make or break the success of your campaign, and we’re here to make sure that everything goes smoothly. We’ve got numerous relationships in place with the various media owners and/or bus companies, which means we can negotiate and manage everything on your behalf, making it easier to get results while taking much of the effort and complication out of your hands. From start to finish, we’ll be managing every aspect of your campaign and taking care of the details so you can focus on getting your message across as effectively as possible.
We are dedicated to making your bus advertising campaign a success. Contact us today to discuss your campaign.
Frequently Asked Questions about Bus Stop Advertising
- “We are considering outdoor advertising and thinking about bus shelter advertising, would this be suitable for a new brand? Also how many bus shelter ads would you recommend?” As a form of outdoor advertising using bus shelters is popular with a whole cross-section of advertisers due to its proven success and ability to hit a wide selection of people. As well as standard bus shelter adverts you could also look at advertising at bus stops, full branding and even seat advertising. Bus shelters are diverse and offer lots of options.
- “Is bus shelter and advertising at bus stops expensive?” No, there are options to suit most budgets and businesses, drop us a message for more info.
- “How do you advertise on a bus stop?” There a few factors which can affect the cost of advertising a bus stop, these can include location, length of cycle, time of year and size of poster.
- “Does bus stop advertising work?” Yes, which is why it remains a firm favourite with a huge range of brands and businesses both in the Dubai, UAE and across the world. There are also options to suit most budgets.
Contact Us
Today’s ever-connected world means people are constantly on the go, but it also means that they’re highly receptive to advertising messages—especially when they’re on-the-go.
If you’re interested in bus shelter advertising for your service, company or product, contact us today. As soon as we receive your enquiry we’ll get back to you with more information on this ever-popular and cost-effective form of out-of-home advertising, including examples, costs and suitable ideas.
We appreciate your interest and look forward to hearing from you.
What is Bus Shelter Advertising?
Bus shelter advertising is a straightforward form of outdoor marketing, where advertisers pay to place promotional and marketing content on bus stops and stations nationwide, with a view to targeting commuters as they go about their daily business.
Bus shelters and other advertising spaces that are located in high-traffic areas, particularly in central locations, tend to be more expensive.
Bus shelter advertising along heavily commuted roadways is able to draw the attention of city residents because of its proximity to bus stops, which facilitates communication between brands and their ideal audience.
What Types of Bus Shelter Advertising are Available?
While bus shelter advertising is usually segregated into two categories, classic and digital, we’ll explore the differences between the two while asking what separates one from the other.
Classic 6 and 16-Sheet Posters
Classic or traditional bus shelter ads commonly use paper advertisements, as do differently sized billboards. For example, compact 6-sheet ads are often used at individual bus shelters and stations, with these ads measuring 1800mm x 1200mm (or 1.8m x 1.2m). A study from 2014 found that this poster size doubles brand recall while simultaneously boosting purchase intent by as much as 47%. So it can be a highly effective way to deliver your message to a targeted audience.
Similarly, you may see 16-sheet bus shelter and train station ads in larger bus shelters and train stations. These types of ads are most likely to be placed in high-traffic locations in major city centers such as Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
Thousands of classic ad panels are used across the length and breadth of the UAE. You’ll find that booking these ads for a booking period of two weeks or longer typically makes them more cost effective than booking them for shorter periods.
Digital Bus Shelter Ads
Although digital bus shelter ads are available in the UAE, there are far fewer of them than traditional bus shelter ads. As the underlying technology continues to grow and as the popularity of digital media rises, this imbalance will likely correct itself over time.
As a whole, digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising is more expensive than traditional marketing channels.
These displays are also referred to as “interactive” ads, since they are equipped with contemporary technologies that allow customers and brands to interact with one another.
For example, digital posters may feature motion detection, which can play a sound or animation when consumers approach the poster.
Companies can also use touch screen and facial recognition technologies for digital advertising, which allows for various types of real-time interaction at times when customers are more likely to engage with brands.
One of the most prominent factors influencing the cost of digital bus shelters and DOOH advertising in general is the technology used. In theory, you can make up for this added expense by increasing engagement levels, which should result in a higher return on your total marketing spend.
What are the Potential Benefits of Bus Shelter Ads?
We touched on the benefits of using 6-sheet posters as part of your marketing campaign earlier, but this is just one advantage among many. The following information outlines other advantages available to brands when they engage in bus shelter advertising. We’ll also explore why these benefits are important to advertisers.
You Can Reach a Large Number of People
Bus shelter ads reach almost all of the UAE population each week, making this type of outdoor advertising one of the most effective ways to reach consumers.
In Dubai alone, there are more than six million bus commuters every day, highlighting a huge customer base for businesses to communicate with.
The ability to reach a high volume of customers is meaningless unless you can engage them effectively. This is one reason why digital displays, led by technology, have become so popular in recent years.
Although all bus shelter ads can work by targeting key demographics at specific times of the day, product and service promotions are most effective when designed to appeal to commuters.
For instance, the daily commute of people who travel by public transport to and from work in large city centers such as Dubai is likely to be made up primarily of young professionals. The regularity of this commute creates a detailed insight into the core target market for any given location.
A local fast-food outlet could create content geared toward commuters as they make their way home from work, promoting the restaurant’s menu.
The strategy behind this approach is that customers are more likely to engage with a brand when they’re in a buying mood. This can lead to increased sales and conversion rates over time, all through a relatively simple marketing premise.
Bus shelter ads, which are controlled remotely by a content management system and can display changeable messages at different times of day, may have even more impact than digital ads in this instance.
You Can Reach Out to Customers in Your Target Geographic Area
Bus shelter ads are especially effective for small and medium-sized businesses because SMEs tend to serve a local community before scaling up. Bus shelter ads provide high levels of exposure in most regions of the UAE, enabling businesses to achieve large numbers of targeted and tangible leads over the course of a campaign. This leads to increased sales conversion rates, ensuring that you achieve the best possible return on your total marketing spend.
The reach also provides new businesses with an immense opportunity to build brand awareness within the local area, which can provide a solid foundation for future campaigns that may be focused on a particular product, service or promotion.
In order to fully capitalize on this opportunity, you may also want to consider investing in moving or mobile billboards. These are used for advertising on the sides of buses or other vehicles. This allows for your marketing efforts to be mobilized and maximized so that you can reach a specific message to a wide audience without compromising on key demographics.
You Can Create Visually Appealing and Eye-Catching Ads
Early in this article, we discussed how digital bus shelter ads are capable of using motion sensors and similar technologies to create effective and truly creative ads. This lends itself to the creation of ads that are memorable and eye-catching, while also stimulating multiple senses simultaneously (as noted by one study which found that sensory marketing techniques increased sales volumes by 10%). Given these benefits, it makes sense for businesses to consider investing in digital bus shelter advertising opportunities.
Bus shelter ads allow you to communicate with consumers during their daily commute, when they are looking for entertainment. Bus shelter ads are a less intrusive medium than other forms of advertising, such as radio or television.
Combining striking visuals with an engaging message can help create a more memorable ad campaign.
Bus Shelter Ads vs. Billboards – What’s the Difference?
Bus shelter ads and classic billboards are two types of outdoor advertising, both belonging to the same family of out-of-home media. Bus shelter posters are the smaller end of the spectrum, with 6 and 16-sheet posters having compact displays that demand concise text and the careful selection of images.
Classic billboard ads are larger in size, with 48 and 96-sheet billboards providing more marketing space for larger, more striking displays.
Larger, elevated billboards offer more space for your messaging, imagery and contact details. The nature of the larger format leaves a significant impact.
Larger billboards may be used as part of an integrated campaign or separately depending on your budget and target audiences.
The Last Word – Are Bus Stop Ads Right for You?
Ultimately, bus shelter ads are a compact, affordable marketing option that is ideal for small businesses that want to build awareness amongst a large local audience.
Bus shelters are also great for brands that want to target commuters and young professionals in particularly busy central locations; these typically see a large number of people use public transport on a daily basis.
However, an advertiser will have to make sure the audience they are targeting uses buses regularly since some demographics are less likely to use buses than others. With the number of buses in rural communities having been reduced slightly in recent years, larger, roadside billboards may offer more value in many locations.
An advertiser will need to understand their target market in detail prior to investing in bus shelter advertising while also ensuring public transport usage is prominent in specific areas.