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Practical Measures to Increase Transit Advertising Revenues (2009)

Chapter: Chapter 3 - Research Findings

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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 3 - Research Findings." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2009. Practical Measures to Increase Transit Advertising Revenues. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14269.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 3 - Research Findings." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2009. Practical Measures to Increase Transit Advertising Revenues. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14269.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 3 - Research Findings." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2009. Practical Measures to Increase Transit Advertising Revenues. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14269.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 3 - Research Findings." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2009. Practical Measures to Increase Transit Advertising Revenues. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14269.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 3 - Research Findings." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2009. Practical Measures to Increase Transit Advertising Revenues. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14269.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 3 - Research Findings." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2009. Practical Measures to Increase Transit Advertising Revenues. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14269.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 3 - Research Findings." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2009. Practical Measures to Increase Transit Advertising Revenues. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14269.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 3 - Research Findings." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2009. Practical Measures to Increase Transit Advertising Revenues. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14269.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 3 - Research Findings." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2009. Practical Measures to Increase Transit Advertising Revenues. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14269.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 3 - Research Findings." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2009. Practical Measures to Increase Transit Advertising Revenues. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14269.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 3 - Research Findings." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2009. Practical Measures to Increase Transit Advertising Revenues. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14269.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 3 - Research Findings." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2009. Practical Measures to Increase Transit Advertising Revenues. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14269.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 3 - Research Findings." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2009. Practical Measures to Increase Transit Advertising Revenues. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14269.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 3 - Research Findings." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2009. Practical Measures to Increase Transit Advertising Revenues. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14269.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 3 - Research Findings." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2009. Practical Measures to Increase Transit Advertising Revenues. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14269.
×
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 3 - Research Findings." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2009. Practical Measures to Increase Transit Advertising Revenues. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14269.
×
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 3 - Research Findings." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2009. Practical Measures to Increase Transit Advertising Revenues. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14269.
×
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 3 - Research Findings." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2009. Practical Measures to Increase Transit Advertising Revenues. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14269.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 3 - Research Findings." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2009. Practical Measures to Increase Transit Advertising Revenues. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14269.
×
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 3 - Research Findings." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2009. Practical Measures to Increase Transit Advertising Revenues. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14269.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 3 - Research Findings." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2009. Practical Measures to Increase Transit Advertising Revenues. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14269.
×
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 3 - Research Findings." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2009. Practical Measures to Increase Transit Advertising Revenues. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14269.
×
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 3 - Research Findings." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2009. Practical Measures to Increase Transit Advertising Revenues. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14269.
×
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 3 - Research Findings." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2009. Practical Measures to Increase Transit Advertising Revenues. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14269.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 3 - Research Findings." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2009. Practical Measures to Increase Transit Advertising Revenues. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14269.
×
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 3 - Research Findings." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2009. Practical Measures to Increase Transit Advertising Revenues. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14269.
×
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 3 - Research Findings." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2009. Practical Measures to Increase Transit Advertising Revenues. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14269.
×
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 3 - Research Findings." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2009. Practical Measures to Increase Transit Advertising Revenues. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14269.
×
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 3 - Research Findings." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2009. Practical Measures to Increase Transit Advertising Revenues. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14269.
×
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 3 - Research Findings." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2009. Practical Measures to Increase Transit Advertising Revenues. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14269.
×
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 3 - Research Findings." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2009. Practical Measures to Increase Transit Advertising Revenues. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14269.
×
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 3 - Research Findings." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2009. Practical Measures to Increase Transit Advertising Revenues. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14269.
×
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 3 - Research Findings." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2009. Practical Measures to Increase Transit Advertising Revenues. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14269.
×
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 3 - Research Findings." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2009. Practical Measures to Increase Transit Advertising Revenues. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14269.
×
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 3 - Research Findings." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2009. Practical Measures to Increase Transit Advertising Revenues. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14269.
×
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 3 - Research Findings." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2009. Practical Measures to Increase Transit Advertising Revenues. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14269.
×
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 3 - Research Findings." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2009. Practical Measures to Increase Transit Advertising Revenues. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14269.
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25 Media Planner Quantitative Research The following sub-sections report the findings of the media planner quantitative research, which took the form of a 10-section survey. Data are presented for the total sam- ple and the three segments—the out-of-home specialists, the generalist media planners with national clients, and the gen- eralist media planners with local or regional clients—among which there are significant differences. For ease of reference, the three discrete segments will be referred to as follows: out-of- home specialists, generalists with national clients, generalists with local/regional clients. Section 1: Screening and Classification of Respondents The specific criteria used to qualify respondents for partic- ipation and the questions asked for classification purposes are presented in Chapter 2. An overview of the findings of this section is as follows. Headlines • Out-of-home specialists are still a lot less prevalent than general media planners. Instead of out-of-home specialists making up half of the sample as planned, they represented only one-third. • The majority of out-of-home specialists in the respondent base came from out-of-home media agencies. The major- ity of generalists with local/regional clients came from advertising agencies. The generalists with national clients came equally from advertising agencies and general media agencies. • The annual billings of respondents’ firms spanned from under $1 million in billings per year to over $500 million per year. For the entire sample, 62% were from firms with billings in the small to medium range of under $1 million to $50 million. The outlying group here was media gener- alists with local/regional clients, in which 80% came from firms of this size. • One-quarter of out-of-home specialists had transit media specialists within their firms. • Fifty percent of respondents had been in media planning for between 6 and 20 years. The out-of-home specialists skewed a bit less experienced, and the generalists with local/regional clients skewed a bit more experienced. Results of the Recruitment The research team set out to recruit 150 respondents over- all, with an almost equal number of respondents in each seg- ment. However, the actual number of respondents recruited was 153: • 42 media generalists with clients that advertise nationally • 60 media generalists with clients that advertise locally and regionally • 32 out-of-home media specialists with clients that adver- tise nationally • 19 out-of-home media specialists with clients that adver- tise locally and regionally Table 2 compares the intended recruitment numbers with the actual numbers. Finding out-of-home specialists was much more difficult than expected. Apparently, firms specializing in out-of-home media are not quite as prevalent as the research team had thought, based on its preliminary qualitative interviews with media planners. Therefore, the sample was adjusted to be two-thirds generalists and one-third out-of-home specialists instead of half and half. (See the sub-section “Major Trends in the Media Industry” in the “Media Industry Overview” section of Chapter 1 for background on the reorganization of the media planning industry.) C H A P T E R 3 Research Findings

Recruiting efforts also yielded a greater number of out- of-home specialists with national advertisers as clients than out-of-home specialists with clients that advertise locally or regionally. Because these specialty media houses are an emerg- ing industry, it makes sense that the clientele is heavier on the national advertiser side at this point. A few other metrics to confirm representativeness of the sample included gender of the respondent, geographic dis- tribution, size of the respondent’s firm and longevity of the respondent in the media planning profession. Thirty-six percent of respondents were male, while 64% were female. Twenty-five percent of respondents were based in the North- east, 25% in the West, 26% in the Midwest and 24% in the South. Thirty-five percent were from firms with less than $10 million in annual billings, 35% were from firms with $11 to $100 million in annual billings, 20% from firms with $101 to $500 million in annual billings, and 10% from firms with more than $500 million in annual billings. Finally, 27% of respondents had been media planners for three to five years (the minimum requirement was three years), 40% had been planners for six to 15 years, and thirty-three percent had been planners for more than 16 years. The research team was satisfied with the representativeness of this sample. Type of Firm Employing the Respondents Respondents were asked the type of firm that employs them. The choices were a general media agency, an out-of- home media agency, or an advertising agency. Out-of-home media specialists came primarily from out-of-home media agencies (65%). Another 26% of them were found in advertis- ing agencies. Generalists with national clients were split almost half and half from advertising agencies and general media agencies. Generalists with local/regional clients were found predominantly in advertising agencies (70%). The other 30% came from general media agencies. (See Table 3.) Firm’s Annual Billings Respondents represented a good distribution of firms by size of annual billings. For the entire sample, 9% worked for firms with less than $1 million in annual billings, 28% worked for firms that billed between $1 million and $10 million, and 26% for firms that billed between $11 million and $50 mil- lion. These firms would be considered small to medium sized. Of the out-of-home specialists, 45% were from firms in this size range. For generalists with national clients, 55% were from firms in this range. For generalists with local/regional clients, 80% were from firms in this size range. In the large size range of firms with $51 million to $500 mil- lion in annual billings, out-of-home specialists had 43% of their total, generalists with national clients had 29% of their total and generalists with local/regional clients had 13% of their total. Finally, in the jumbo size range, defined for this study as firms with billings in excess of $500 million per year, out-of- home specialists had 12% of their total, generalists with national clients had 17% of their total and generalists with local/regional clients had 7% of their total. (See Table 3.) Presence of Transit Media Specialists in-House Among out-of-home specialists, more than one-quarter (28%) reported having a transit media specialist in-house. Among media generalists with national clients, almost one-fifth (19%) reported having a transit media specialist in-house. The lowest number, as expected, was found in firms employing the generalists with local/regional clients: only 5% reported having a transit media specialist in house. (See Table 3.) Years in Media Planning Respondents had to have been in media planning for at least three years to be admitted to the survey. More than 50% of all media planners in the survey had been in the business 26 ActualPl 150 75 75 TOTAL 75 38 37 Out-of- Home Specialists 75 37 38 Media Generalists Media Generalists Out-of- Home Specialists TOTAL Advertise nationally 42 Advertise locally or regionally 60 TOTAL 102 anned Clients 7432 7919 15351 Table 2. Results of the recruitment.

27 Profile Questions TOTAL SAMPLE (% of 153) OOH Specialists (% of 51) Media Generalists w/ National Clients (% of 42) Media Generalists w/ Local/Regional (% of 60) 1. Type of Firm Respondents Work For 0.03B6.748.91.82ycnegAaideMlareneG --7.466.12ycnegAaideMHOO B0.074.255.523.05ycnegAgnisitrevdA 2. Firm’ s Annual Billings 3.315.90.25.8m1$< B7.634.126.125.72m01$–m1$ 0.038.326.125.52m05$–m11$ 0.014.126.914.61m002$–m15$ 3.31.7A5.321.11m005$–m002$ 0.51.79.59.5B1$–m005$ 7.15.99.52.5B1$> 3. Presence of Transit Media Specialist in House 0.50.91A5.723.61esuohnitsilaicepsaidemtisnarT 4. Years in Media Planning 0.511.834.136.62sry5–3 7.651.838.854.25sry02–6 3.828.329.90.12sry02> 5. Familiarity with Transit Media 0.019.11A9.258.42railimafylemertxE B3.355.044.928.14railimafyreV 3.825.047.515.72railimafyletaredoM 3.81.70.29.5railimafylthgilS 6. Frequency of Recommendations 0.533.54A5.077.94tisnartdnemmoceryltneuqerF/syawlA B7.157.536.123.73tisnartdnemmoceryllanoisaccO 4.310.918.71.31tisnartdnemmocerreveN/yleraR 7.667.584.37sdraobllibdnemmoceryltneuqerF/syawlA 5.523.415.12sdraobllibdnemmoceryllanoisaccO 8.7-1.5sdraobllibdnemmocerreveN/yleraR 7. Size of Typical Out-of-Home Budget B3.325.98.74.41000,05$< B0.025.99.54.21k99$–k05$ 0.040.055.529.73k005$–k001$ 7.610.138.064.53k005$> 7.6B5.12A4.130.71+m1$> A = Significantly higher than all media generalists @ 90% confidence level B = Significantly higher than the other media generalists @ 90% confidence level Table 3. Profile of media planners.

for six to 20 years. However, the aggregate experience levels among the three segments varied. The out-of-home special- ists had the smallest percentage in the most experienced group (more than 20 years). Generalists with local/regional clients had the smallest percentage in the least experienced group (three to five years). The generalists with national clients had the most evenly dispersed group, with the highest percent- age of the three segments in the least experienced group and the lowest percentage of the three segments in the six to 20 years group. (See Table 3.) Section 2: Out-of-Home and Transit Media Budgets and Usage The main information gathered in this section of the test related to familiarity with and usage of out-of-home media in general and transit specifically. To get a sense of the current prevalence of usage, the research team asked what portion of clients’ media plans include out-of-home media and transit media, as well as what portion of media spending is allocated to out-of-home media and to transit media. Also the size, in dollars, of the typical out-of-home media budget with which respondents typically work was requested. Headlines • Familiarity with transit is greatest among out-of-home specialists, although a large proportion of generalist media planners also claim to be very familiar. • Frequency of recommending transit is highest among out- of-home specialists, but is still less than the frequency with which they recommend billboards. • There are fewer out-of-home specialists, but they recom- mend out-of-home media far more frequently than generalist media planners, and they tend to have larger out-of-home budgets with which to work. • For two-thirds of generalist media planners, the typical percentage of a media budget allocated to out-of-home is between 5% and 20%. • Fifty-three percent of out-of-home specialists recommend transit to more than 50% of their clients. Only 21% of generalist media planners do the same. • The median percentage of an out-of-home budget that gets allocated to transit is 11% to 15% according to generalist media planners and 21% to 25% according to out-of-home specialists. • Bus exteriors are the most popular form of transit adver- tising used by all three segments. Out-of-home specialists use bus wraps, bus stations and station dominations much more frequently than generalist media planners. • The most frequently cited obstacles to recommending more transit media were budget limitations, lack of a good transit option in the geography needed, and lack of fit with marketing and media objectives. Familiarity with Transit Media All respondents had to be at least minimally familiar with transit to be admitted to the study. As expected, out-of-home specialists reported the greatest familiarity with transit media: 82% self-reported as either “extremely familiar” or “very famil- iar” with transit media, with 53% checking the “extremely familiar” box. Only 52% of the generalists with national clients checked the “extremely familiar” or “very familiar” boxes, with only 12% claiming to be “extremely familiar.” Among gener- alists with local/regional clients, 63% are “extremely familiar” or “very familiar” with transit—higher than the generalists with national clients, perhaps because of greater demand for transit among their clients. Similar to generalists with national clients, the “extremely familiar” group among generalists with local/regional clients is small: 10%. With the lowest percentage of respondents who are “extremely” or “very” familiar with transit media, the gener- alists with predominantly national clients had a high percent- age of respondents in the next box down: “moderately famil- iar.” Together with data on their attitudes toward transit media, this finding has a positive implication: more transit advertising could possibly be recommended and sold by gen- eralists with national clients simply by increasing the preva- lence of planners who are very or extremely familiar with transit media. (See Table 3.) Frequency of Recommending Transit Media and Billboards The proxy for actual usage of transit media was the fre- quency with which respondents recommend transit advertis- ing to their clients. Among all respondents, almost 50% reported that they “always” or “frequently” recommend tran- sit to their clients. Only 13% said that they “rarely” or “never” recommend transit. Within the segments, the highest fre- quency was reported among the out-of-home specialists: more than 70% reported “always” or “frequently” recommending transit media. Among generalists with national clients, this percentage was 45%. Among generalists with local/regional clients, this percentage was 35%. The comparable percentages for recommendation of bill- boards provide a sense of transit media’s growth opportunity. Among the entire sample, 73% “always” or “frequently” rec- ommend billboards vs. 50% who do so for transit media. Among the out-of-home specialists, 86% “always” or “fre- quently” recommend billboards vs. 71% who do so for tran- sit media. Among all generalist media planners, 67% “always” or “frequently” recommend billboards vs. 39% who do so for transit media. (See Table 3.) 28

Frequency of Recommending Out-of-Home Media Respondents were asked for the percentage of clients to whom they recommend out-of-home media. This question was asked to get a sense of the prevalence of out-of-home in media plans. As expected, this percentage was very high for out-of-home specialists: 73% of out-of-home specialists said that they recommend out-of-home media to 100% of clients. In contrast, only 8% of generalist media planners (both types combined) recommend out-of-home to 100% of clients. Only 43% of generalist media planners recommend out-of- home to more than 50% of their clients. (See Table 4.) Out-of-Home’s Percentage of Total Media Budget Generalist media planners were asked for their best guess at a representative percentage of media dollars allocated to out-of- home media. The question was phrased this way in recognition that most media planners work on multiple clients’ plans. Two- thirds of generalist media planners said that between 5% and 20% of a total media budget is typically allocated to out- of-home media. As expected, the range of percentages skews higher among the out-of-home specialists. (See Table 5.) Size of Out-of-Home Budget As expected, out-of-home specialists tend to work with larger out-of-home media budgets. Thirty-one percent of out-of-home specialists said that the out-of-home budget they typically deal with is more than $1 million. In contrast, 22% of generalists with national clients and 7% of generalists with local/regional clients said that their typical out-of-home budget is $1 million or more. The generalists with local/regional clients tend to have the smallest out-of-home budgets to work with: 43% said that their typical out-of-home budget is under $100,000. The comparable percentage for generalists with national clients was 19%, and for out-of-home specialists was 14%. (See Table 3.) Frequency of Recommending Transit Media Respondents were asked for the percentage of clients to whom they recommend transit media. As expected, this per- centage was higher for out-of-home specialists than for gener- alist media planners. Fifty-three percent of out-of-home spe- cialists said that they recommend transit media to more than 50% of clients. In contrast, only 21% of generalist media plan- ners (both types combined, no statistical difference between the two) recommend transit media to more than 50% of clients. (See Table 6.) Transit’s Percentage of Out-of-Home Media Budget Respondents were asked for their best guess at a representa- tive percentage of out-of-home media dollars allocated to tran- sit media. The question was phrased this way in recognition 29 Clients TOTAL SAMPLE (% of 153) OOH Specialists (% of 51) Media Generalists w/ National Clients (% of 42) Media Generalists w/ Local/Regional (% of 60) 0.59.11-2.5%5< 7.118.40.25.6%01-5 0.018.40.29.5%02-11 0.015.9-5.6%03-12 0.015.9-5.6%04-13 7.113.410.22.9%05-14 0.59.11-2.5%06-15 0.018.40.29.5%07-16 3.89.118.72.9%08-17 0.018.40.29.5%09-18 -8.4A8.96.4%99-19 3.81.7A5.274.92%001 6.143.541.492.06%05> A= Significantly higher than all media generalists @ 90% confidence level B= Significantly higher than the other media generalists @ 90% confidence level Data compiled from responses to Question 3 of the survey (available in Appendix A). Table 4. Frequency of recommending out-of-home media.

30 OOH Budget (% of Total) TOTAL SAMPLE (% of 153) OOH Specialists (% of 51) Media Generalists w/ National Clients (% of 42) Media Generalists w/ Local/Regional (% of 60) 7.111.79.55.8%5< 3.328.327.313.02%01-5 3.320.917.516.91%51-11 0.028.328.113.81%02-61 7.113.418.98.11%03-12 7.61.70.22.5%04-13 7.1-0.23.1%05-14 7.18.49.33.3%06-15 ----%07-16 --9.50.2%08-17 --0.27.%09-18 --A5.722.9%001-19 A= Significantly higher than all media generalists @ 90% confidence level B= Significantly higher than the other media generalists @ 90% confidence level Data compiled from responses to Question 5 of the survey (available in Appendix A). Table 5. Typical percentage of total media budget used on out-of-home media. Clients TOTAL SAMPLE (% of 153) OOH Specialists (% of 51) Media Generalists w/ National Clients (% of 42) Media Generalists w/ Local/Regional (% of 60) 0.54.20.23.3%0 7.6B4.129.38.9%4-1 B0.514.28.72.9%01-5 3.318.40.22.7%51-11 3.81.70.29.5%02-61 3.89.118.72.9%52-12 3.39.119.39.5%03-62 3.85.99.32.7%04-13 7.111.77.311.11%05-14 3.34.28.76.4%06-15 3.34.29.59.3%07-16 0.51.7A6.718.9%08-17 3.34.2A7.315.6%09-18 0.51.78.75.6%001-19 A= Significantly higher than all media generalists @ 90% confidence level B= Significantly higher than the other media generalists @ 90% confidence level Data compiled from responses to Question 13 of the survey (available in Appendix A). Table 6. Frequency of recommending transit media.

that most media planners work on multiple clients’ plans. The majority of generalist media planners (60%) said that between 0% and 15% of an out-of-home media budget is typically spent on transit media. The majority of out-of-home special- ists (61%) said that between 16% and 50% of an out-of-home media budget is typically spent on transit media. The median for out-of-home specialists was 21% to 25%. The median for generalist media planners was 11% to 15%. (See Table 7.) Most Recommended Transit Media Among 13 different transit advertising formats, bus exteri- ors are used by the highest percentage of respondents across all three segments. Eighty-eight percent of out-of-home spe- cialists, 79% of generalists with national clients, and 83% of generalists with local/regional clients recommended bus exte- riors in the past year. The similarities end here. Three transit formats are also highly used by out-of-home specialists, but are only moderately used by the generalists: bus wraps; bus benches, shelters and stations; and branded stations. Bus wraps, out-of-home specialists’ second most popular format, were recommended by 82% of out-of-home special- ists, but only 55% of generalists with national clients and only 57% of generalists with local/regional clients. Bus benches, shelters and stations were recommended by 82% of out-of- home specialists, but only 60% of generalists with national clients and only 67% of generalists with local/regional clients. Finally, branded stations (also known as “station domina- tions”) were recommended by 71% of out-of-home special- ists, but only 41% of generalists with national clients and only 15% of generalists with local/regional clients. For some of these, like bus wraps and branded stations, the smaller out- of-home budgets might be a factor in explaining lower usage among the generalist segments. (See Table 8.) Obstacles to Recommending More Transit Media Respondents were asked to state, in their own words, what was keeping them from recommending more transit media. The most often cited reasons were these: • Budget restrictions • Lack of “good transit” in the desired market(s) • Lack of fit with the advertiser’s brand objectives • Not among the media the client prefers • Too expensive in general/production costs too high Section 3: Effectiveness of Transit Advertising To understand the media selections of media planners, how they view transit media’s best uses needs to be under- stood. The research team explored assumptions about appli- cability by presenting 14 common media and marketing 31 Transit Budget (% of OOH) TOTAL SAMPLE (% of 153) OOH Specialists (% of 51) Media Generalists w/ National Clients (% of 42) Media Generalists w/ Local/Regional (% of 60) 7.129.118.74.41%5< 0.022.627.316.91%01-5 B0.529.119.50.51%51-11 7.67.618.111.11%02-61 7.68.47.315.8%52-12 7.61.78.98.7%03-62 3.35.98.92.7%04-13 7.14.2A7.515.6%05-14 3.34.28.76.4%06-15 ----%07-16 3.38.49.39.3%08-17 7.1--7.0%09-18 -4.2-7.0%001-19 A = Significantly higher than all media generalists @ 90% confidence level B = Significantly higher than the other media generalists @ 90% confidence level Data compiled from responses to Question 14 of the survey (available in Appendix A). Table 7. Typical percentage of total out-of-home budget used for transit.

objectives (e.g., enhances brand image, extends reach and fre- quency), and asking respondents to select the objectives that transit media is highly effective at achieving. Instead of asking about transit media in general, the survey asked about the two most commonly used transit media—bus exteriors and sub- way trains, platforms and stations—separately from each other. This separation was to explore whether the different formats that are often, if not always, grouped together under the name “transit media” were not in fact discrete product lines serving different purposes. For comparison, the survey also asked the same applicability questions for billboards and place-based media. After asking for all the media and marketing objectives that each media type could achieve, the survey asked which media was the best at achieving each objective. For this one- answer–only test, six options were offered: transit (as a group), billboards, electronic billboards, place-based media, televi- sion and the Internet. The last two media are of course not considered out-of-home media. The intent was to explore whether, and against which objectives, transit media could compete with these “major” media. Headlines • The marketing objective most frequently seen as being effectively achieved by both bus and subway is “build brand awareness.” • In the second tier of objectives achieved by bus and subway are “build/extend reach” and “build/extend frequency.” • Bus and subway forms of transit advertising are perceived to differ in terms of the breadth of audience each reaches: bus exteriors reach a mass audience best, and subway forms reach a captive audience best. • Billboards are viewed very similarly in terms of media and marketing objectives achieved to both bus exteriors and subway, but especially subway. • In the one-answer–only test, transit was awarded the most “best at” votes of any medium tested for “reach a captive audience.” This was the only one of the 14 objectives for which transit received the most “best at” votes. • Among out-of-home specialists, transit holds its own against billboards on the four media and marketing objectives for which transit receives its greatest number of “best at” scores: “build/extend frequency,” “reach a captive audience,” “build/extend reach,” and “achieve market saturation.” • Among generalist media planners, transit outscored bill- boards on three of the four objectives for which transit received the most “best at” scores. Transit outscored bill- boards on “reach a captive audience,” “break through clut- ter,” and “create a buzz.” Billboard outscored transit on “achieve market saturation.” Media and Marketing Objectives Most Effectively Met by Each Medium Respondents were given a list of 14 media and marketing objectives, and asked to select any and all objectives that bus exteriors, subways and billboards are very effective at achieving. 32 Transit Media Recommended in Past Year TOTAL SAMPLE (% of 153) OOH Specialists (% of 51) Media Generalists w/ National Clients (% of 42) Media Generalist w/ Local/Regional (% of 60) Bus exteriors 83.7 88.2 78.6 83.3 Bus benches, stations, shelters 69.9 82.4 A 59.5 66.7 Bus wraps 64.7 82.4 A 54.8 56.7 Rail platforms and stations 44.4 54.9 A 40.5 38.3 Dioramas, clocks, other back-lit displays 43.1 60.8 A 40.5 30.0 Bus interiors 41.8 39.2 54.8 B 35.0 Branded stations 40.5 70.6 A 40.5 B 15.0 Digital displays 39.2 43.1 42.9 33.3 Rail interiors 36.6 52.9 A 31.0 26.7 Transit TV 19.0 13.7 31.0B 15.0 Rail exteriors 16.3 35.3 A 9.5 5.0 Railcar wraps 16.3 31.4 A 11.9 6.7 Tickets, passes, route maps 10.5 9.8 19.0B 5.0 A = Significantly higher than all media generalists @ 90% confidence level B = Significantly higher than the other media generalists @ 90% confidence level Data compiled from responses to Question 11 of the survey (available in Appendix A). Table 8. Transit media recommended in past year.

Bus exteriors received the highest ratings (the highest per- centage of media planners selecting this objective) for “reach a mass audience” (80%) and “build brand awareness” (78%). Overall, all three media planner segments agreed with these selections. In addition, an exceptionally high percentage of generalists with national clients (81%) selected “create a buzz.” Bus exteriors received a low rating for “reach a captive audience” (34%). (See Table 9.) Subways, platforms and stations received their highest ratings for achieving the objectives “reach a captive audi- ence” (78%) and “build brand awareness” (77%), as shown in Table 10. Billboards also received their highest ratings for achieving these objectives: “reach a captive audience” (75%) and “build brand awareness” (82%). (See Table 11.) The ratings for “reach a mass audience” were softer for both subways and billboards (64% and 65%, respectively) than the ratings for buses (80%). (See Tables 8, 9 and 10.) After building brand awareness and reaching a captive/mass audience, the next highest scoring media objectives for bus exteriors, subways and billboards were “build/extend reach” and “build/extend frequency.” “Create a buzz” was more highly selected for bus exteriors and subways than for billboards. In general, the level of ratings (percentage of media plan- ners selecting an objective) was higher for out-of-home spe- cialists than for generalist media planners. Among general- ist media planners, the ratings levels were higher for gener- alists with national clients than for generalists with local/ regional clients. Unique Capabilities of Transit Media versus Other Out-of-Home Media, Television and the Internet Table 12 shows the results of a separate exercise in which respondents were asked to indicate, for the same 14 media and marketing objectives, which one medium did the best job at each objective. (In the previous exercise, respondents could select as many of the 14 objectives as they thought the medium was highly effective at achieving.) The media options given were transit (not separated into bus and rail), billboards, digital billboards, place-based media, television, and the Internet. Transit was awarded the most number one votes (43%) for only one objective: “reach a captive audience.” It is interesting to note that this objective was highly selected in the previous exercise in reference to subways, but not to bus exteriors. In addition, transit was recognized for its ability to “achieve market saturation,” with 24% of media planners giving it their “best at” vote, albeit less than billboards’ 33% and tele- vision’s 38%. For “build/extend frequency,” transit was second 33 Media/Marketing Objectives TOTAL SAMPLE(% of 153) OOH Specialists (% of 51) Media Generalists w/ National Clients (% of 42) Media Generalists w/ Local/Regional (% of 60) 3.336.822.9343ecneiduaevitpacahcaeR 3.349.24A8.854.84noitarutastekrameveihcA 7.163.46A5.673.76ycneuqerfdnetxe/dliuB 3.864.174.082.37hcaerdnetxe/dliuB 51B7.534.925.52rettulchguorhtkaerB 3.85B0.187.663.76zzubaetaerC B3.334.126.915.52esahcrupfotniopotesolceB 7.1718A2.887.97ecneiduassamahcaeR 7.131.83A9.255.04tnemgescihpargomedcificepsahcaeR 7.64B3.46A6.868.85ecivresrotcudorpwenahcnuaL 7.66B3.38A2.884.87ssenerawadnarbdliuB 7.12B5.044.131.03swenetacinummoC 3.313.415.3271remusnocybnoitcareggirT 536.821.349.53egamidnarbecnahnE A = Significantly higher than all media generalists @ 90% confidence level B = Significantly higher than the other media generalists @ 90% confidence level Data compiled from responses to Question 17 of the survey (available in Appendix A). Table 9. Percentage of media planners who consider media and marketing objectives to be very effectively met by bus exteriors.

34 Media/Marketing Objectives TOTAL SAMPLE(% of 153) OOH Specialists (% of 51) Media Generalists w/ National Clients (% of 42) Media Generalists w/ Local/Regional (% of 60) 574.17A3.688.77ecneiduaevitpacahcaeR 7.12B1.83A1.5443noitarutastekrameveihcA 565.956.867.46ycneuqerfdnetxe/dliuB 3.859.16A5.674.56hcaerdnetxe/dliuB 3.828.044.137.23rettulchguorhtkaerB 063.465.274.56zzubaetaerC 7.138.325.328.62esahcrupfotniopotesolceB 3.855.95A5.471.46ecneiduassamahcaeR 3.352.54A5.275.75tnemgescihpargomedcificepsahcaeR 7.156.747.232.45ecivresrotcudorpwenahcnuaL 073.384.081.77ssenerawadnarbdliuB 03B6.74A9.255.24swenetacinummoC 5191A4.136.12remusnocybnoitcareggirT 049.24A8.851.74egamidnarbecnahnE A= Significantly higher than all media generalists @ 90% confidence level B= Significantly higher than the other media generalists @ 90% confidence level Data compiled from responses to Question 18 of the survey (available in Appendix A). Table 10. Percentage of media planners who consider media and marketing objectives to be very effectively met by subway trains, platforms and stations. Media/Marketing Objectives TOTAL SAMPLE(% of 153) OOH Specialists (% of 51) Media Generalists(% of 102) 6.07A1.287.47ecneiduaevitpacahcaeR 3.536.358.14noitarutastekrameveihcA 7.269.766.46ycneuqerfdnetxe/dliuB 8.066.871.76hcaerdnetxe/dliuB 1.544.127.63rettulchguorhtkaerB 7.666.3526zzubaetaerC 5.52A4.121.42esahcrupfotniopotesolceB 7.269.766.46ecneiduassamahcaeR 1.74A0.5775tnemgescihpargomedcificepsahcaeR 15A9.7675ecivresrotcudorpwenahcnuaL 4.28A1.283.28ssenerawadnarbdliuB 2.934.648.14swenetacinummoC 7.51A0.5291remusnocybnoitcareggirT 15056.05egamidnarbecnahnE A= Significantly higher than all media generalists @ 90% confidence level B= Significantly higher than the other media generalists @ 90% confidence level Data compiled from responses to Question 20 of the survey (available in Appendix A). Table 11. Percentage of media planners who consider media and marketing objectives to be very effectively met by billboards.

only to billboards (23% of best votes vs. 40%, respectively). For its ability to extend reach, transit received 22% of “best at” votes, behind billboards (33%) and television (35%). Table 13 shows the variation in how the three media plan- ner segments awarded “best at” scores. “Reach a captive audi- ence” received a high percentage of “best at” scores across all three segments. But out-of-home specialists give transit more credit for building/extending reach and frequency than it appears the generalist media planners do. The generalists see transit as stronger at achieving market saturation and breaking through clutter. An important question is: what happened to “build brand awareness” and “reach a mass audience” in the “best at” exer- cise? These were the strengths of transit coming out of the first exercise where media planners could select all media and marketing objectives very effectively achieved by transit. For “build brand awareness,” transit received only 5% of the “best at” votes. For “reach a mass audience,” transit received only 11% of the number one votes. The explanation is that the questions asked were completely different from each other. The first question asked, “What are all the things that transit media is good at?” The second ques- tion asked, “Is there anything that transit is the best at?” While transit is highly effective at building brand awareness and reaching mass audiences, other media are better at these objec- tives. It is only for reaching captive audiences that transit is seen to be the best media option among those tested. Transit Media versus Billboards Billboards were voted the best at building/extending fre- quency and building/extending reach. Billboards virtually tied with digital billboards and place-based media for break- ing through clutter. Among out-of-home specialists, transit media were better than, equal to, or just a bit behind billboards for each of the top four objectives that transit was rated best at achieving. For transit’s top score, 41% of “best” votes for “build/extend frequency,” billboards also scored 41% of “best” votes. For the ability to “reach a captive audience,” transit got 39% of “best” votes (the second highest ranking for transit) and bill- boards received 12%. For the ability to “build/extend reach” (transit’s third highest ranking), transit got 35% of “best” votes to billboards’ 39%. For the ability to “achieve market satura- tion” (transit’s fourth highest ranking), transit received 31% of “best” votes and billboards received 37%. (See Table 14.) From the fifth rated objective that transit was voted best at achieving to the end of the list, transit falls significantly behind billboards in percentage of “best” votes. Notably, on “reach a mass audience,” transit’s fifth highest scoring objective, transit 35 Media/Marketing Objectives Transit Billboard Digital BB Place- based TV Internet %7%31%82%3%6%34ecneiduaevitpacahcaeR %1%83%1%2%33%42noitarutastekrameveihcA %41%91%3%1%04%32ycneuqerfdnetxe/dliuB %7%53%1%1%33%22hcaerdnetxe/dliuB %4%8%42%42%32%81rettulchguorhtkaerB %22%32%7%41%61%81zzubaetaerC Be close to point of purchase 12% 36% 1% 35% 3% 14% %5%25%0%3%92%11ecneiduassamahcaeR Reach a specific demographic segment 10% 13% 2% 14% 24% 37% Launch a new product or service 7% 18% 0% 2% 69% 5% %5%95%1%1%92%5ssenerawadnarbdliuB %23%45%1%6%5%3swenetacinummoC Trigger action by a consumer 1% 8% 1% 20% 31% 39% %4%76%8%4%71%0egamis’dnarbaecnahnE No significance testing was performed across media types. Data compiled from responses to Question 21 of the survey (available in Appendix A). Table 12. Results of all respondents (153) voting for the medium considered best at achieving media/ marketing objectives.

Media/Marketing Objectives Total Sample (% of 153) OOH Specialists (% of 51) Media Generalists w/ National Clients (% of 42) Media Generalists w/ Local/Regional (% of 60) 04259334ecneiduaevitpacahcaeR 81421342noitarutastekramgniveihcA 3141A1432ycneuqerfdnetxe/dliuB 3191A5322hcaerdnetxe/dliuB 22420181rettulchguorhtkaerB 31628181zzubaetaerC 01412121esahcrupfotniopotesolcgnieB 77A0211ecneiduassamahcaeR 876111tnemgescihpargomedcificepsahcaeR 37017ecivresrotcudorpwenahcnuaL 22A015ssenerawadnarbdliuB 2063swengnitacinummoC 2021remusnocybnoitcareggirT 0000egamis'dnarbaecnahnE A= Significantly higher than all media generalists @ 90% confidence level B= Significantly higher than the other media generalists @ 90% confidence level Data compiled from responses to Question 21 of the survey (available in Appendix A). Table 13. Results of respondents (by media planner segment) voting for the media/marketing objectives transit is best at achieving. Media/Marketing Objectives Transit Billboard Digital BB Place-based TV Internet %4%01%92%6%21%93ecneiduaevitpacahcaeR %2%62%2%2%73%13noitarutastekramgniveihcA %6%8%2%2%14%14ycneuqerfdnetxe/dliuB %4%22%0%0%93%53hcaerdnetxe/dliuB %0%2%92%81%14%01rettulchguorhtkaerB %81%41%01%61%62%81zzubaetaerC Being close to point of purchase 12% 33% 4% 41% 0% 10% %8%62%0%6%14%02ecneiduassamahcaeR Reach a specific demographic segment 16% 31% 2% 26% 12% 14% Launch a new product or service 10% 37% 0% 2% 43% 8% %4%82%4%2%35%01ssenerawadnarbdliuB %82%94%2%21%4%6swengnitacinummoC %92%61%73%2%41%2remusnocybnoitcareggirT %2%34%21%6%73%0egamis'dnarbaecnahnE No significance testing was performed across media types. Data compiled from responses to Question 21 of the survey (available in Appendix A). Table 14. Results of out-of-home specialists (51) voting for the medium considered best at achieving media/marketing objectives.

received 20% of “best” votes compared with billboards’ 41%. On “create a buzz,” transit’s sixth highest scoring objective, transit received 18% of “best” votes compared to billboards’ 26%. On “build brand awareness,” the tenth highest scoring objective, transit received 10% of “best” votes compared to bill- boards’ 53%. The largest gaps in “best” scores, with transit trail- ing billboards, were for the objectives “reach a mass audience,” “being close to point of purchase,” “launch a new product,” “build brand awareness,” “break through clutter” and “enhance a brand’s image.” In all instances, transit was at least 20 percent- age points behind billboards in “best” scores. (See Table 14.) Turning now to generalist media planners, they scored transit better than billboards for three of transit’s top four media objectives. For transit’s top score, 45% of “best” votes for “reach a captive audience,” billboards received only 3%. For transit’s second highest objective, “break through clut- ter,” transit got 23% of “best” votes and billboards received 14%. For transit’s third highest objective, “achieve market saturation,” transit received 21% of “best” votes and bill- boards received 31%. For transit’s fourth highest objective, “create a buzz,” transit received 19% of “best” votes and bill- boards received 11%. (See Table 15.) As with the out-of-home specialists, transit scores for the remaining media and marketing objectives were mostly lower than billboards’ scores. The largest gaps in “best” scores, with transit trailing billboard, were for the objectives “build/ extend frequency” and “being close to point of purchase.” In these two instances, transit was at least 20 percentage points behind billboards in “best” scores. (See Table 15.) Section 4: Media Planner Beliefs and Attitudes The research team hypothesized that beliefs and attitudes with respect to transit media might be obstacles to its greater usage among media planners. This section of the survey asked media planners to agree or disagree with a series of attitude statements that might influence their usage of transit media. Headlines • Roughly one-third of media planners equate transit adver- tising’s audience with patrons of public transit; others rec- ognize the external audiences of drivers and pedestrians, as well. • Although buses come to mind most frequently as the defi- nition of transit advertising space, media planners also include most other moving-vehicle advertising (e.g., taxi- cab tops) and most other street-level advertising (e.g., tele- phone kiosks). 37 Media/Marketing Objectives Transit Billboard Digital BB Place-based TV Internet %8%51%82%2%3%54ecneiduaevitpacahcaeR %1%44%1%2%13%12noitarutastekramgniveihcA %91%52%4%0%93%41ycneuqerfdnetxe/dliuB %9%24%1%2%03%61hcaerdnetxe/dliuB %6%11%12%72%41%32rettulchguorhtkaerB %52%82%5%41%11%91zzubaetaerC Being close to point of purchase 12% 37% 0% 31% 4% 16% %3%66%0%2%32%7ecneiduassamahcaeR Reach a specific demographic segment 8% 4% 2% 9% 29% 48% Launch a new product or service 5% 9% 0% 2% 81% 3% %5%67%0%1%71%2ssenerawadnarbdliuB %43%65%0%3%6%1swengnitacinummoC %44%83%11%1%5%1remusnocybnoitcareggirT %5%97%6%3%7%0egamis'dnarbaecnahnE No significance testing was performed across media types Data compiled from responses to Question 21 of the survey (available in Appendix A). Table 15. Results of media generalists (102) voting for the medium considered best at achieving media/marketing objectives.

• In general, the most positive attitudes and beliefs about transit media are held by out-of-home specialists, followed by generalists with national clients. • Media planners very strongly agree that they are comfort- able recommending transit media to clients. • Overall, media planners’ experiences with transit media are positive. • There was a fair amount of agreement that transit is dif- ficult to sell to clients: one-quarter of media generalists with national clients agreed that transit is difficult to sell, and one-third of media generalists with local/regional clients agreed. • Media planners are split in their beliefs about clients’ percep- tions of transit media: a little less than half agree that clients’ perceptions are positive, and a little less than half could neither agree nor disagree with this statement. • The majority of media planners agreed that “transit needs to be pitched to clients; they rarely request it themselves,” confirming that the leverage in growing transit media sales rests largely with media planners. • The majority of media planners agreed that clients generally approve their media plans as recommended, confirming that media planners are, in most instances, the determiners of which media advertisers ultimately purchase. • Out-of-home specialists and generalists with national clients are much more likely to consider transit in the con- text of building an out-of-home media plan. In contrast, generalists with local/regional clients are almost equally likely to consider transit against all other media as they are to consider transit in the context of out-of-home. Conceptions of the Consumer Audience for Transit Advertising Early in the survey, before any chance of influence by subse- quent survey questions, respondents were asked who they con- sidered to be the consumer audience for transit. Respondents wrote in their responses. Roughly one-third, among both gen- eralist media planners and out-of-home specialists, described an audience that was essentially the users of public transit. Sam- ple responses included the following: “Business consumers that utilize transit for transportation to and from work,” “Riders,” “Commuters, adults 18+ for general transit; more upscale for suburban commuters,” “People who are savvy consumers and want the best value for their dollar,” and “Working adults in urban areas and selected ethnic targets.” The other two-thirds of media planners think of the con- sumer audience for transit advertising as, as one respon- dent put it, “Everyone who leaves the house.” More sample responses included the following: “Commuters driving by, pedestrians walking around, people using public transporta- tion,” “Extremely wide range . . . all ages,” “Urban dwellers and commuters,” “On-the-go individuals, business profes- sionals,” and “Broad audience; adults 18–54 primarily.” Definition of Transit Advertising As a follow-up question, respondents were asked to state the first type of ad space that comes to mind when they think of transit advertising. The majority of responses included buses. Roughly 20% of responses included subway or rail. Roughly 20% of responses included bus shelters and benches. There was an occasional mention of taxicabs, billboards, truck-mounted billboards, transit TV, telephone kiosks and airport billboards. When asked for other types of transit advertising space that comes to mind, respondents frequently mentioned bus wraps, subway, commuter rail, shelters and taxis. There were also many mentions of mobile trucks and vans, kiosks, urban pan- els (wallscapes), station domination, airport advertising, transit TV, and street furniture. The finding here is that there is no clear boundary around what is called transit advertising. Because the research team hypothesized that this would be the case, the survey, after this point, provided a definition of transit advertising as follows: “For the remainder of the survey, please think of transit media as any form of advertising on the interior or exterior of public buses, subways, streetcars, trolleys and commuter rail, including stations and platforms.” Beliefs about the Use and Applicability of Transit Media Media planners agreed (77%) with the statement, “Transit’s best use is as a supplement to other media.” Higher percentages of general media planners agreed than out-of-home specialists (71% of out-of-home specialists agree/strongly agree; 83% of generalists with national clients agree/strongly agree; 78% of generalists with local/regional clients agree/strongly agree). (See Table 16.) Over half of media planners (54%) disagreed with the statement, “Transit is only appropriate for a small group of categories.” A higher percentage of out-of-home specialists disagreed than general media planners (73% of out-of-home specialists disagree/strongly disagree; 45% of generalists with national clients agree/strongly agree; 45% of generalists with local/regional clients agree/strongly agree). (See Table 16.) Media planners also disagreed (41%) with the statement, “Transit is an afterthought in most media plans.” A higher per- centage of out-of-home specialists disagreed than general media planners (53% of out-of-home specialists disagree/strongly disagree; 31% of generalists with national clients disagree/ strongly disagree; 37% of generalists with local/regional clients disagree/strongly disagree). (See Table 16.) 38

39 Belief Statements Opinion TOTAL SAMPLE (153) OOH Specialists (51) Media Generalists w/ National Clients (42) Media Generalists w/ Local/Regional (60) Beliefs about the Use and Applicability of Transit Media “Transit’s best use is a supplement to other media” Agree/ Strongly Agree 77% 71% 83% 78% Neither Agree nor Disagree 15% 22% 10% 13% Disagree/ Strongly Disagree 8% 8% 7% 8% “I’ve had a good experience with transit advertising” Agree/ Strongly Agree 77% 82% 74% 75% Neither Agree nor Disagree 21% 16% 24% 23% Disagree/ Strongly Disagree 2% 2% 2% 2% “Transit is only appropriate for a small group of categories” Agree/ Strongly Agree 13% 4% 19% 17% Neither Agree nor Disagree 33% 24% 36% 38% Disagree/ Strongly Disagree 54% 73%A 45% 45% “Transit is an afterthought in most media plans” Agree/ Strongly Agree 26% 18% 36% 27% Neither Agree nor Disagree 33% 29% 33% 37% Disagree/ Strongly Disagree 41% 53%A 31% 37% Beliefs about Recommending Transit Media “I’m comfortable recommending transit media to clients” Agree/ Strongly Agree 92% 96% 93% 88% Neither Agree nor Disagree 5% 2% 5% 7% Disagree/ Strongly Disagree 3% 2% 2% 5% “I recommend transit media more than I did in the past” Agree/ Strongly Agree 52% 67%A 52% 40% Neither Agree nor Disagree 41% 31% 38% 50% Disagree/ Strongly Disagree 7% 2% 10% 10% Beliefs about Clients and Transit Media “Transit needs to be pitched to clients; they rarely request it themselves” Agree/ Strongly Agree 56% 45% 64% 58% Neither Agree nor Disagree 21% 26% 21% 17% Disagree/ Strongly Disagree 24% 29% 14% 25% “It’s difficult to sell transit media to clients” Agree/ Strongly Agree 21% 20% 19% 23% Neither Agree nor Disagree 45% 39% 55% 43% Disagree/ Strongly Disagree 34% 41% 26% 33% “Clients’ perceptions of transit media are positive” Agree/ Strongly Agree 46% 45% 50% 45% Neither Agree nor Disagree 44% 49% 43% 40% Disagree/ Strongly Disagree 10% 6% 7% 15% “Clients generally approve our media plans as recommended” Agree/ Strongly Agree 78% 84% 71% 77% Neither Agree nor Disagree 15% 12% 24% 12% Disagree/ Strongly Disagree 7% 4% 5% 12% A = Significantly higher than all media generalists @ 90% confidence level B = Significantly higher than the other media generalists @ 90% confidence level Data compiled from responses to Question 23 of the survey (available in Appendix A). Table 16. Media planners’ beliefs regarding transit media.

Media planners agreed (77%) with the statement, “I’ve had a good experience with transit advertising.” A higher percent- age of out-of-home specialists agreed than general media plan- ners (82% of out-of-home specialists agree/strongly agree; 74% of generalists with national clients agree/strongly agree; 75% of generalists with local/regional clients agree/strongly agree). (See Table 16.) Beliefs about Recommending Transit Media The strongest agreement with any of the belief statements was with, “I’m comfortable recommending media to clients.” All three segments strongly agreed with this statement: 96% of out-of-home specialists agree/strongly agree; 93% of gen- eralists with national clients agree/strongly agree; 88% of gen- eralists with local/regional clients agree/strongly agree. Differences among the three segments are seen in the strongly agree scores: 57% of out-of-home specialists strongly agree; 33% of generalists with national clients strongly agree; 27% of generalists with local/regional clients strongly agree. (See Table 16.) More than half of media planners agreed (52%) with the statement, “I recommend more transit media than I did in the past.” A higher percentage of out-of-home specialists agreed than general media planners (67% of out-of-home specialists agree/strongly agree; 52% of generalists with national clients agree/strongly agree; 40% of generalists with local/regional clients agree/strongly agree). (See Table 16.) Beliefs about Clients and Transit Media Higher percentages of media planners disagreed (34%) than agreed (21%) with the statement, “It is difficult to sell transit media to clients.” The largest percentage (45%) was on the fence, and neither agreed nor disagreed. A higher percentage of out-of-home specialists disagreed than general media planners (41% of out-of-home specialists disagree/strongly disagree; 26% of generalists with national clients disagree/strongly dis- agree; 33% of generalists with local/regional clients disagree/ strongly disagree). (See Table 16) Higher percentages of media planners agreed (46%) than disagreed (10%) with the statement, “Clients’ perceptions of transit media are positive.” However, again a large percentage (44%) was on the fence, and neither agreed nor disagreed. The three segments of media planners all agreed to roughly the same extent (45% of out-of-home specialists agree/strongly agree; 50% of generalists with national clients agree/strongly agree; 45% of generalists with local/regional clients agree/ strongly agree). (See Table 16.) More than half of media planners agreed (56%) with the statement, “Transit needs to be pitched to clients; they rarely request it themselves.” A higher percentage of general media planners agreed than out-of-home specialists (45% of out-of- home specialists agree/strongly agree; 64% of generalists with national clients agree/strongly agree; 58% of generalists with local/regional clients agree/strongly agree). This confirms that the advent of media firms specializing in out-of-home media is a positive for transit advertising. (See Table 16.) In light of the extremely high level of comfort media plan- ners have with recommending transit to clients, it is striking that such a large percentage of media planners are on the fence about the ease of selling transit and the positive nature of clients’ perceptions of transit. The interpretation of the research team is that media planners are expressing confi- dence in their ability to sell transit despite transit being a dif- ficult medium to sell. Finally, media planners agreed (78%) with the statement, “Clients generally approve our media plans as recommended.” A higher percentage of out-of-home specialists agreed than general media planners (84% of out-of-home specialists agree/ strongly agree; 71% of generalists with national clients agree/ strongly agree; 77% of generalists with local/regional clients agree/strongly agree). (See Table 16.) These last two response sets help to confirm the hypothesis that media planners have a great deal of influence over adver- tisers’ decision making. However, it is clearly not absolute influence. Transit’s Competitive Set The issue of competitive set is very important in positioning strategy. The survey asked media planners which statement they agreed with the most of the following choices: • “Transit is included in the set of general media I consider along with TV, radio, print, billboard, Internet and all the rest of my media options.” • “Transit is included in the set of out-of-home media I con- sider once it has been decided that there will be an out-of- home component to the media plan.” • “Transit is not in the consideration set because it is usually an afterthought.” The top two behaviors were reported in all three media planner segments. Among out-of-home specialists, two- thirds (65%) consider transit against other out-of-home media and one-third (31%) consider transit against all other media. Among generalists with national clients, 74% consider transit against other out-of-home media and 24% consider transit against all other media. (See Table 17.) The outlier is the third group, media generalists with local/regional clients. Almost half of these media planners (48%) consider transit against all other media. This makes sense, given that the out-of-home budgets these planners 40

have to work with tend to be smaller. With fewer dollars to work with, out-of-home is less likely to be regarded as a dis- crete plan. Another 42% of these media planners do consider transit against other out-of-home media, while the final 10% disregard transit during media planning altogether. (See Table 17.) Section 5: Image of Transit Advertising This section of the survey presented 11 image descriptors and asked respondents to rate how well each described tran- sit media. The image descriptors were chosen based on important attributes of all media (e.g., “efficient”) as well as attributes of particular concern to transit (e.g., “downscale”). For the full list of image descriptors and the response data, please refer to Table 18. Headlines • Out-of-home specialists are very comfortable with transit advertising’s effectiveness. • Generalist media planners are significantly more skeptical of transit advertising’s effectiveness. • Transit is not widely viewed as efficient, innovative or clean. • Transit is perceived as being somewhat expensive, espe- cially by the generalists with local/regional clients. 41 Possible Competitive Sets for Transit TOTAL SAMPLE (% of 153) OOH Specialists (% of 51) Media Generalists w/ National Clients (% of 42) Media Generalists w/ Local/Regional (% of 60) “Transit is included in the set of general media I consider along with TV, radio, print, billboard, internet, B84421363”snoitpoaidemymfotserehtlladna “Transit is included in the set of out-of-home media I consider once it’s been decided that there will be an 24475685”nalpaidemehtfotnenopmocemoh-fo-tuo “Transit is not in the consideration set because it’s B01246”thguohtretfanayllausu A = Significantly higher than all media generalists @ 90% confidence level B = Significantly higher than the other media generalists @ 90% confidence level Data compiled from responses to Question 15 of the survey (available in Appendix A). Table 17. Transit’s competitive set. Image Descriptors TOTAL SAMPLE (% of 153) OOH Specialists (% of 51) Media Generalists w/ National Clients (% of 42) Media Generalists w/ Local/Regional (% of 60) 3.83B8.45A4.285.75evitceffE 3.348.459.453.05elbaileR 3.82B9.241.549.73tneiciffE B3.334.127.512.42evisnepxE 3.320.135.325.52evisurtnI 7.11B7.536.713.02piH 0.018.48.78.7naelC 7.6B4.120.22.9yxeS 3.320.135.325.52evitavonnI 0.51.79.32.5detacilpmoC 3.313.419.51.11elacsnwoD A = Significantly higher than all media generalists @ 90% confidence level B = Significantly higher than the other media generalists @ 90% confidence level Data compiled from responses to Question 24 of the survey (available in Appendix A). Table 18. Percentage of media planners who indicated the following image descriptors describe transit media “extremely well” or “very well.”

• Transit is not widely viewed as downscale. • The overall level of image ratings for transit is fairly low, especially among the generalists with local/regional clients. Perceptions of Transit’s Image by Out-of-Home Specialists For out-of-home specialists, the adjective that was most descriptive of transit advertising was “effective.” Being effective is a minimum requirement of media, so a high score is critical. Eighty-two percent of out-of-home specialists said that “effec- tive” describes transit either “very well” or “extremely well.” Such was not the case for the descriptor “efficient.” Efficiency is, of course, also a key measure of any medium. Although still voted one of the top three descriptors of transit media, only 45% of out-of-home specialists said that “efficient” describes transit “very” or “extremely well.” Most likely, transit suffers on this aspect of its image because the medium lacks a mea- surement system. This issue will come through loudly in the discussion of the desirability of transit media features survey in Section 6. As shown in Table 19, the adjectives “innovative,” “hip” and “sexy” were not considered strongly descriptive of tran- sit media (24%, 18% and 2%, respectively, said “very” or “extremely well). This is an issue because media planners suc- ceed at their jobs to the extent that they can present fresh and exciting ideas for media campaigns to advertisers. Media that do not generate any interest or excitement can be easily over- looked at plan development time. A strong negative rating among out-of-home specialists was “clean.” Two-thirds of this group said that “clean” describes transit either “slightly” or “not at all.” Lack of cleanliness is probably more of an issue for transit advertising than for any other medium, because the ads themselves are at ground level and fully exposed to vandals, the elements, and the dirt, grime and grease that may accumulate from roads or track. The extent to which the environs in and on which ads are placed affects perceptions of transit advertising cleanliness was beyond the scope of this study. However, the qualitative interviews with media planners suggested that the cleanliness concern arises predominantly from the cleanliness of the ads themselves and not from the ad frames or the ad venues. (See Table 19.) Perceptions of Transit’s Image by Generalists with National Clients Table 18 shows that generalists with national clients rate transit media significantly lower than out-of-home specialists on “effective” (55% for generalists with national clients versus 82% for out-of-home specialists). This is the single largest dis- crepancy in viewpoints between the media planner segments. This finding is very interesting because this segment of media planners appears in many of its responses to be enthusiastic supporters of transit media. However, if close to half of gen- eralists with national clients cannot affirm that transit adver- tising is effective, then they certainly will not put themselves in the position of defending its presence in their media plans to advertisers. Generalists with national clients agreed with out-of-home specialists on the adjectives least associated with transit: “com- plicated,” “downscale” and “clean.” There were hypotheses that transit advertising is perceived as downscale media for 42 Image Descriptors “Describes extremely well” “Describes extremely well” + “Describes very well” “Describes Somewhat” “Describes slightly” + “Does not describe at all” “Does not describe at all” Effective 11.8% 82.4% A 13.7% 3.9% - %0.2%8.9%3.53%9.45%0.2elbaileR Efficient 13.7% 45.1% 41.2% 13.7% 7.8% %6.71A%0.94%3.53%7.51-evisnepxE Intrusive 2.0% 23.5% 17.6% 31.4% 33.3% %7.31%1.54A%3.73%6.71%0.2piH %6.12%7.66%5.52%8.7-naelC %3.73%6.07%5.72%0.2-yxeS Innovative 2.0% 23.5% 45.1% 31.4% 7.8% Complicated - 3.9% 17.6% 78.4% 58.8% Downscale - 5.9% 31.4% 62.7% 31.4% A = Significantly higher than all media generalists @ 90% confidence level Data compiled from responses to Question 24 of the survey (available in Appendix A). Table 19. Transit image ratings among out of-home specialists (51).

downscale audiences and that, due to their local nature and diverse offerings, transit media were complicated to learn. Both might have been deterrents to increased use of transit media, so it is a positive finding that neither “downscale” nor “complicated” is highly associated with transit. (See Table 20.) On the other hand, not being perceived as clean has a higher probability of being a deterrent. For advertisers, brands are highly cultivated and valued assets, and most take great care to control the environment in which they are displayed. Interestingly, generalists with national clients rated transit higher than the other two segments rated it on being hip, sexy, innovative and intrusive. (See Table 18.) Perceptions of Transit’s Image by Generalists with Local/Regional Clients Transit media’s image ratings by generalists with local/ regional clients were the least positive of the three segments. This segment’s rating of transit advertising’s effectiveness was the lowest of the three segments (38% versus 55% for general- ists with national clients versus 82% for out-of-home special- ists). This segment’s scoring of transit media on “reliable” and “efficient” was also significantly below the comparable scoring by the other two segments. (See Table 18.) Within this segment, a new attribute rose to the top scoring tier: “expensive.” In contrast to the other two segments where the responses tended toward “expensive” describing transit media “somewhat,” “slightly” or “not at all,” the responses of generalists with local/regional clients tended toward “some- what,” “very well” and “extremely well.” As for the image descriptors “hip,” “sexy,” “innovative” and “intrusive,” this segment of media planners agreed with the other two: “slightly” or “not at all.” (See Table 21.) Section 6: Desirability of Features of Media This section of the survey presented 17 features of media— all media—and asked respondents to rate each in terms of desir- ability to them when they are making their media planning selections. A prominent theme in pre-research interviews with media planners was the hindrance to transit media usage of not having a credible audience measurement system. The feature of having a credible audience measurement system, therefore, was one that needed to be quantified in terms of desirability to media planners. Most of the other features were selected for the same reason: each was presented as either a hindrance or a potential uniqueness. This part of the survey was constructed for respondents to indicate the value they put on each. Headlines • The most important features of any medium are: – It delivers exactly what was bought. – It is a good value for the money. 43 Image Descriptors “Describes completely” “Describes completely” + “Describes very well” “Describes Somewhat” “Describes slightly” + “Does not describe at all” “Does not describe at all” Effective 7% 55% B 43% 2% - -%41%13%55%7elbaileR -%41%34%34%01tneiciffE Expensive 12% 21% 45% 33% 9% %12%91%92%13%2evisurtnI %21%14%42B%63%2piH %21%05554%5-naelC %42%54B533B%12-yxeS Innovative 5% 31% 50% B 19% 7% Complicated - 7% 17% 76% 41% Downscale - 14% 33% 52% 19% B = Significantly higher than media generalists with local/regional clients @ 90% confidence level Data compiled from responses to Question 24 of the survey (available in Appendix A). Table 20. Transit image ratings among media generalists with national clients (42).

– It can target specific areas or demographic groups. – It has a credible audience measurement system. – It has comprehensive demographic data. • The three media planner segments largely agreed on the relative desirability of the features. Desirability of Media Features The 17 features listed in the survey, and the percentage of respondents that said the feature was “very desirable” or “extremely desirable,” are listed in Table 22. The top five features, i.e., those rated “extremely desirable” or “very desirable” by more than 85% of respondents, should be considered “must haves” for any medium trying to capture the attention of media planners. These top-rated features con- sist of delivering exactly what was bought, being a good value for the money, having the ability to target audiences or geog- raphies, having a credible audience measurement system, and offering comprehensive demographic data. The next six features, because their ratings are 75% or more, should be considered “really should haves.” These fea- tures consist of providing flexibility with flighting, having knowledgeable sales representatives, delivering metrics for return-on-investment calculations, offering innovative prod- ucts, facilitating multi-city media buys, and having reason- able production costs. The next three features, with ratings exceeding 65%, should be considered “should haves.” These features consist of having the ability to get the creative team excited, being simple to exe- cute a campaign in, and being easy to learn and stay on top of. Finally, of the 17 features presented, these three were the least desirable (note that this is not the same as not desirable): being immune from technology that permits consumers to skip viewing an ad, offering 24-hour exposure, and having standardized ad sizes. These features are “nice to haves.” Notable Differences Among the Segments A significantly higher percentage of generalist media plan- ners stated that having comprehensive demographic data is extremely desirable versus out-of-home specialists (77% of out-of-home specialists rated it “very desirable” or “extremely desirable” versus 91% of generalists with national clients and 90% of generalists with local/regional clients). Also, a signifi- cantly higher percentage of generalist media planners (both segments) than out-of-home specialists stated that delivering metrics for ROI evaluations is extremely desirable (59% of out-of-home specialists rated it “very desirable” or “extremely desirable” versus 91% of generalists with national clients and 85% of generalists with local/regional clients). (See Table 22.) These findings most likely reflect that generalist media planners are used to working with television, radio and print, all of which have been delivering data—both demographic and proof-of-performance data—for many years. The out- of-home specialists, on the other hand, are more accustomed to working with media that, at least until now, have been unable to provide good quantitative data. Section 7: Rating of Transit’s and Competitors’ Abilities to Deliver Media Features The previous section of the survey asked the respondents to rate the desirability of the 17 media features. In this section, they were asked to rate how well each feature describes transit 44 Image Descriptors “Describes extremely well” “Describes extremely well” + “Describes very well” “Describes Somewhat” “Describes slightly” + “Does not describe at all” “Does not describe at all” Effective 10.0% 38.3% 46.7% 15.0% B 1.7% Reliable 6.7% 43.3% 33.3% 23.3% 8.3% Efficient 3.3% 28.3% 40.0% 31.7% B 8.3% Expensive 8.3% 33.3% 38.3% 28.3% 10.0% Intrusive - 23.3% 25.0% 45.0% B 26.7% B%7.14B%3.86%0.02%7.11%7.1piH B%7.62%7.65%3.33%0.01-naelC B%0.54B%7.67%7.61%7.6%7.1yxeS Innovative 5.0% 23.3% 31.7% 45.0% B 16.7% Complicated - 5.0% 21.7% 73.3% 58.3% B Downscale 1.7% 13.3% 38.3% 48.3% 23.3% B = Significantly higher than media generalists w/ national clients @ 90% confidence level Data compiled from responses to Question 24 of the survey (available in Appendix A). Table 21. Transit image ratings among generalists with local/regional clients (60).

media. Half of the sample was also asked how well each feature describes billboards. The other half of the sample was also asked how well each feature described place-based media. Headlines • Overall, transit media’s ratings are very low. That is to say, the majority of media planners do not think that transit media delivers very well on most of the features given. • Transit advertising’s strongest features are mostly found within the least desirable/“nice to have” tier of media features. • The differences found between out-of-home specialists and generalist media planners are of minor significance. • Out-of-home specialists gave billboards higher ratings than they gave transit media. • The place-based media ratings were as low overall as tran- sit media’s ratings. Transit Media’s Ratings Table 23 shows the ratings for transit media on all the fea- tures listed in the survey. Ratings for transit media are weak overall. Typically in an exercise like this one, solid-performing entities score in the 70 and 80 percentile on many features, and even in the 90 per- centile on the features ranked as most important or desirable. Fewer than 50% of media planners rated the most desirable 45 Attributes/Benefits Tested TOTAL SAMPLE (% of 153) OOH Specialists (% of 51) Media Generalists w/ National Clients (% of 42) Media Generalists w/ Local/Regional (% of 60) Delivers exactly what was bought 95 90 95 98 Is a good value for the money 92 88 95 93 Can target specific areas or demographic groups 89 84 91 92 Has a credible audience measurement system 88 80 91 93 Has comprehensive demographic data 86 77 91 90 Is flexible on flighting 84 82 82 87 Has knowledgeable sales representatives 84 84 86 82 Can deliver metrics for ROI evaluations 78 59 91 85 Offers innovative products 77 73 83 77 Is easy to execute a multi-city buy in 76 71 88B 72 Has reasonable production costs 75 67 81 78 Has the ability to get my creative team excited 73 75 76 68 Is simple to coordinate and execute a campaign in 71 75 79B 63 Is easy to learn and stay on top of 71 71 64 75 Cannot be “TiVo’d” 54 67A 41 53B Offers 24-hour exposure 53 59 55 47 Has standardized ad sizes 50 53 55 43 A = Significantly higher than all media generalists @ 90% confidence level B = Significantly higher than the other media generalists @ 90% confidence level Data compiled from responses to Questions 25 and 26 of the survey (available in Appendix A). Table 22. Percentage of media planners who indicated the following media attributes are “extremely desirable” or “very desirable.”

features as describing transit media “completely” or “very well,” which indicates that this entity, transit media, cannot be performing with a great deal of strength. Transit media’s ratings are especially weak on features relating to data: “has a credible audience measurement system,” “has comprehensive demographic data” and “can deliver metrics for ROI evalua- tions” are all rated extremely low. (See Table 23.) The features related to the cost of transit media are also rated low. Only 37% of media planners said “a good value for the money” describes transit “completely” or “very well.” A sizable portion of respondents said that “a good value for the money” describes transit “somewhat.” On “has reasonable production costs,” only 21% of respondents thought it describes transit media “completely” or “very well.” Again, a large group (44%) said “somewhat.” Aside from issues with data and perceived value, transit media are not widely believed to deliver exactly what was bought—media planners’ most desirable feature. Nor are transit media widely believed to target very well or be flexible on flighting. Table 24 arrays the features in a matrix that facilitates focus- ing on transit media’s performance on the most important (according to the target audience) features. The most important features are in the top row. Within the top row, the features are then sorted by those on which transit media perform very well (the left-most column) and those on which transit media’s per- formance is weakest (the right-most column). Table 24 makes clear that there are no features considered of top importance to media planners on which transit is perceived to perform well. A common practice is to promote a product (in this case, a set of media) using the features that cluster in the top left- hand boxes. These features are the most compelling to the target audience and are done very well—perhaps better than competitors—by the product. The top right-hand boxes are the issues to be addressed—and addressed fast—before they undermine the positive messages about the product. One of the starkest findings of this study is that transit would be commencing any communications with its target audience from a deficit position. There is a vacuum where the positives should be, and it needs to be filled immediately. 46 DESIRABLE Q 25 & 26 Describes TRANSIT Q 27 & 28 TOTAL SAMPLE (% of 153) OOH Specialists (% of 51) Media Generalists w/ National Clients (% of 42) Media Generalists w/ Local/ Regional (% of 60) TOTAL SAMPLE (% of 153) OOH Specialists (% of 51) Media Generalists National Clients (% of 42) Media Generalists w/ Local/ w/ Regional (% of 60) Delivers exactly what was bought 95 90 95 98 47 45 55 43 Is a good value for the money 92 88 95 93 37 37 45B 32 Can target specific areas or demographic groups 89 84 91 92 45 51 48 38 Has a credible audience measurement system 88 80 91 93 14 12 17 13 Has comprehensive demographic data 86 77 91 90 20 26 21 13 Is flexible on flighting 84 82 83 87 40 35 43 42 Has knowledgeable sales representatives 84 84 86 82 54 53 64B 48 Can deliver metrics for ROI evaluations 78 59 91 85 16 8 26B 15 Offers innovative products 77 73 83 77 33 29 43B 28 Is easy to execute a multi-city buy in 76 71 88B 72 41 41 52B 33 Has reasonable production costs 75 67 81 78 20 22 24 17 Has the ability to get my creative team excited 73 75 76 68 33 31 36 32 Is simple to coordinate and execute a campaign in 71 75 79B 63 45 47 50 40 Is easy to learn and stay on top of 71 71 64 75 61 65 60 58 Cannot be “TiVo’d” 54 67 A 41 53B 86 90 88 82 Offers 24-hour exposure 53 59 55 47 58 49 71B 57 Has standardized ad sizes 50 53 55 43 39 35 45 37 Attributes/Benefits Tested A = Significantly higher than all media generalists @ 90% confidence level B = Significantly higher than the other media generalists @ 90% confidence level Data compiled from responses to Questions 25 through 28 of the survey (available in Appendix A). Table 23. Percentage of media planners who indicated the following media attributes are “extremely desirable” or “very desirable” and describe transit “completely” or “very well.”

Transit vs. Billboards and Place-Based Media Table 25 compares media planners’ ratings for how well the media features describe transit, billboard and place-based media. Billboard was rated higher than transit and place-based media on several of the most highly desirable features. Table 26 is the billboard matrix that is comparable to the transit matrix in Table 24. The top left box of the billboard matrix is empty of features, as well. However, billboards are clearly perceived to perform better than transit on the most important features: instead of having features appear no earlier than the 25%–49% column, as the transit matrix does, the billboard matrix has two features in the 50%–74% column. So billboard is perceived to perform pretty well on “delivers exactly what was bought”— the number one most important feature—and “can target spe- cific areas or demographic groups”—also among the top five. Section 8: Satisfaction with Sales Representatives To a significant degree, whether media planners select transit media for their plans can be influenced by their inter- actions with their transit media sales representatives. All of the planners in the study work with sales representatives for transit media. Some of the planners have representatives who sell them transit media only. Others have representatives who sell multiple media. It was important to explore media planners’ overall satisfaction with sales representatives and whether satisfaction was affected by whether the representative was dedicated to transit or not. Headlines • 52% of media planners have sales representatives who sell them transit as well as other media. • Of these, only half said that the transit selling tools are as good as selling tools for the other media sold by the same representative. • Also of these, less than half agree that the representative spends as much time with them on transit as on the other media being sold. • The respondents with transit-dedicated sales representatives (48%) are more satisfied overall than their counterparts. • Among these media planners, more than one-third of the generalists rated transit representatives below average for delivering useful demographic data and effective selling tools and materials. Media Planners with Multi-Media Sales Representatives Respondents with sales representatives who sell multiple types of media, including transit, rate their representatives as knowledgeable about transit, with 73% agreeing or strongly agreeing. However, a much lower percentage of media plan- ners (51%) agree that the selling tools they get for transit are 47 Attributes % of respondents who said the attribute “Describes transit media completely or very well” >75% CRITICAL / MUST HAVE Delivers exactly (47) Good value for $ (37) Can target (45) Aud. measurement (14) Comp. demo data (20) REALLY SHOULD HAVE & SHOULD HAVE Know. sales reps (54) Easy to learn (61) Flexible flighting (40) Innovative prods (33) Multi-city buy (41) Simple to execute (45) Creative team (33) ROI metrics (16) Reas. prod. costs (20) NICE TO HAVE Can’t be TiVo’d (86) 24-hr exposure (58) Standardized ad sizes (39) Percentages are of all respondents (153). <25%50%-74% 25%-49% Table 24. Transit ratings matrix.

as useful as the ones they get for other media (23% disagree). Also, only 42% agree that the sales representative spends as much time on transit as on other media they are selling (29% disagree). (See Table 27.) Media Planners with Transit-Only Sales Representatives Transit-dedicated sales representatives received somewhat mixed scores from their media planners, as well. The highest score was for the percentage of media planners agreeing with the statement, “Relative to other media sales reps, my transit rep is reliable for following up after the pitch.” Eighty-two percent of these media planners rated their sales representa- tives at or above average on follow-up. Another positive is that the majority of media planners (85%) scored their sales representatives at or above average on “takes time to understand my needs and my clients’ objectives.” The importance of this was very clearly expressed in several of the media planner interviews conducted prior to the quan- titative study. The lowest scores of transit-only sales representatives were related to providing effective selling tools and provid- ing useful demographic information. Thirty percent of media planners rated their sales representatives below aver- age on these two attributes. Among this subset of media planners, larger percentages of generalist media planners than out-of-home specialists give their sales representatives below average scores on providing demographic infor- mation, effective selling materials and reliable follow-up, and keeping planners current on new media options. (See Table 28.) 48 Attributes/Benefits Tested Desirable Describes TOTAL SAMPLE (% of 153) Transit (% of 153) Billboards (% of 79) Place- based (% of 74) Delivers exactly what was bought 95 47 59 15 Is a good value for the money 92 37 41 18 Can target specific areas or demographic groups 89 45 59 23 Has a credible audience measurement system 88 14 21 56 Has comprehensive demographic data 86 20 22 44 Is flexible on flighting 84 40 38 30 Has knowledgeable sales representatives 84 54 64 15 Can deliver metrics for ROI evaluations 78 16 7 59 Offers innovative products 77 33 26 32 Is easy to execute a multi-city buy in 76 41 56 27 Has reasonable production costs 75 20 28 35 Has the ability to get my creative team excited 73 33 35 34 Is simple to coordinate and execute a campaign in 71 45 62 17 Is easy to learn and stay on top of 71 61 77 8 Cannot be “TiVo’d” 54 86 80 5 Offers 24-hour exposure 53 58 77 23 Has standardized ad sizes 50 39 73 20 Significance testing was not performed across media types. Data compiled from responses to Questions 25 through 30 of the survey (available in Appendix A). Table 25. Percentage of respondents who indicated that the following media attributes are “extremely desirable” or “very desirable” and describe transit, billboard and place-based media “completely” or “very well.”

Overall Satisfaction with Transit Media Sales Representatives A little more than 60% of all surveyed media planners reported being “satisfied” (38%), “very satisfied” (19%) or “extremely satisfied” (5%) with their transit sales representa- tives. That means that almost 40%—a very large number in the experience of the research team—of media planners reported being only “somewhat” or “not at all” satisfied with their transit sales representatives. The dissatisfaction is heavier on the side of the media plan- ners with multi-media representatives. Among these, 43% were “somewhat” or “not at all” satisfied with their sales rep- resentatives compared with 34% of media planners with ded- icated transit sales representatives. (See Table 29.) Section 9: New Media Respondents were presented with seven new media options and asked to indicate which, if any, of the options would significantly increase the likelihood of their recommending more transit media. The media options presented came from new technologies that are being discussed in the press as well 49 % of respondents (79) who said the attribute “Describes billboards completely or very well”Attributes >75% 50%-74% 25%-49% CRITICAL / MUST HAVE Delivers exactly (59) Can target (59) Good value for $ (41) Aud. measure. (21) Comp. demo data (22) REALLY SHOULD HAVE & SHOULD HAVE Easy to learn (77) Know. sales reps (64) Multi-city buy (56) Simple to execute (62) Flexible flighting (38) Innovative prods (26) Reas. Prod. costs (28) Creative team (35) ROI metrics (7) NICE TO HAVE Can’t be TiVo’d (80) 24-hr exposure (77) Standard. ad sizes (73) <25% Table 26. Billboard ratings matrix. Statements of Satisfaction TOTAL SAMPLE (% of 79) Out-of-Home (% of 35) General w/ National (% of 40) General w/ Local/Regional (% of 39) “My media sales rep spends as much time selling me on transit as on other media” Strongly agree/Agree 42 43 44 39 Disagree/ Strongly disagree 29 31 17 35 “My media sales rep is as knowledgeable about transit as other media” Strongly agree/Agree 73 71 83 69 Disagree/ Strongly disagree 10 11 6 12 “My media sales rep provides selling tools and materials for transit that are as effective as those for other media” Strongly agree/Agree 51 60 44 42 Disagree/ Strongly disagree 23 23 17 27 Total sample = media planners with sales representatives who sell multiple media including transit (79) Data compiled from responses to Question 32 of the survey (available in Appendix A). Table 27. Media planners’ ratings of multi-media sales representatives.

as experimented with by select transit agencies both in the United States and abroad. Headlines • Digital media generate the greatest potential for increasing media planners’ use of transit media. • A very small percentage of respondents said that none of the options presented would affect their use of transit media. Transit and New Media The majority of media planners indicated that digital dis- plays on platforms and in stations, as well as digital displays 50 Statements of Satisfaction TOTAL SAMPLE (% of 74) OUT-OF- HOME (% of 16)* General w/ National (% of 24)* General w/ Local/Regional (% of 34) “Relative to other media sales reps, my transit rep takes time to understand my needs and my clients’ objectives” BIC/AA 43 50 58 29 WIC/BA 15 13 4 24 B “Relative to other media sales reps, my transit rep is knowledgeable and prepared” BIC/AA 51 50 58 47 WIC/BA 12 6 8 18 “Relative to other media sales reps, my transit rep provides useful demographic information” BIC/AA 32 31 42 27 WIC/BA 30 6 21 47 B “Relative to other media sales reps, my transit rep provides effective selling tools and materials” BIC/AA 39 31 58 B 29 WIC/BA 24 6 25 32 “Relative to other media sales reps, my transit rep is reliable for following up after the pitch” BIC/AA 61 81 A 67 47 WIC/BA 18 6 13 27 “Relative to other media sales reps, my transit rep keeps me current on new media options” BIC/AA 45 38 63 35 WIC/BA 24 6 13 41 B Total sample = media planners with transit-dedicated sales representatives (74) *Caution: small sample size BIC/AA = Best in Class or Above Average WIC/BA = Worst in Class or Below Average A = Significantly higher than all media generalists @ 90% confidence level B = Significantly higher than the other media generalists @ 90% confidence level Data compiled from responses to Question 33 of the survey (available in Appendix A). Table 28. Media planners’ ratings of transit-only sales representatives. Response Total Sample (% of 153) Planners with multi-media reps (% of 79) Planners with transit-dedicated reps (% of 74) Extremely satisfied 5 4 5 Very satisfied 19 13 26 Satisfied 38 41 35 Somewhat satisfied 29 30 28 Not at all satisfied 9 13 5 Extremely/very satisfied 24 17 31 Satisfied 38 41 35 Somewhat/not at all satisfied 39 43 34 Note: Significance testing not performed in this instance. Data compiled from responses to Question 34 of the survey (available in Appendix A). Table 29. Overall satisfaction with sales representatives.

on rail and bus interiors would “significantly increase the likelihood” of their recommending transit advertising. These options were the two highest scoring of the new media options presented, with scores of 61% (digital displays on platforms and in stations) and 58% (digital displays on rail and bus inte- riors). Among out-of-home specialists, the top most popular new media options were digital displays on platforms and in stations (71%) and exterior station wallscapes (67%). Among generalists with national clients, the two most popular options were digital displays on platforms and in stations (57%) and plasma screen TVs in railcars and buses (57%). Among the generalists with local/regional clients, the two most popular options were digital displays on rail and bus interiors (67%) and digital displays on platforms and in stations (55%). Overall, plasma screens in buses and rail cars made 51% of respondents interested in using more transit media. Exterior station wallscapes were motivating to 49% of media planners. Blue-tooth–enabled (i.e., interactive) posters were of interest to 39%, and the glow-in-the-dark displays that are currently being contemplated by some advertising sales contractors were motivating to only 35% of media planners. Finally, in- tunnel subway advertising was motivating to only about 27% of respondents. (See Table 30.) Several out-of-home specialists had other options in mind. The only alternative actually written into the survey responses was interactive digital displays that react to being stepped on or waved over by moving or changing the image on the screen. Section 10: Final Suggestions The final question of the survey asked respondents to report, in their own words, what could be done to make transit more attractive to them and to their clients, the advertisers. Almost 100% of survey takers wrote in a response. Headlines • The top two suggestions for making transit media more attractive were (1) to develop a credible audience measure- ment system along with tools for measuring ROI and (2) to innovate/add new formats. • Improving the pricing of the media, lowering the cost of production and increasing flexibility of how formats are bundled were high among the suggestions of generalist media planners, but not nearly as evident among out-of- home specialists. Suggestions for Making Transit Media More Attractive The most frequently offered suggestions for improving the attractiveness of transit media were (1) to develop an audi- ence measurement system and tools for measuring ROI and (2) to add innovative media opportunities, such as digital formats. Each of these was mentioned by roughly 20% of 51 Descriptor Total Sample (% of 153) Out-of-Home Specialists (% of 51) Media Generalists w/ National Clients (% of 42) Media Generalists w/ Local/Regional (% of 60) Digital displays on platforms, in stations 61 71 A 57 55 Digital displays on rail/bus B76549585sroiretni Plasma screen TVs in 35753415sesub/sracliar Exterior station wallscapes 49 67 A 45 37 Blue-tooth enabled posters 39 29 48 42 Glow-in-dark displays on rail/bus exteriors 35 45 A 31 30 In-tunnel subway 32929272gnisitrevda None of the above 7 2 5 12 3-A416rehtO A = Significantly higher than all media generalists @ 90% confidence level B = Significantly higher than the other media generalists @ 90% confidence level Data compiled from responses to Question 35 of the survey (available in Appendix A). Table 30. Percentage of respondents who indicated new media would significantly increase their likelihood of recommending more transit advertising to their clients.

respondents, both among out-of-home specialists and gener- alist media planners. Other respondents’ suggestions touched on the cost of tran- sit media, the production costs associated with transit media, sales, the image of transit media, and the topics of availability and flexibility. The following comments, in respondents’ words, are samples from each of these suggestion areas. • Audience Data and Measurement – “Better demographic targeting. Better accountability metrics.” – “More updated and available data. Being able to more accurately measure impressions is very important.” – “More specific demographic data along with data that correlates ad exposure with product sales.” – “Provide more demographic analysis and definitely provide a more obtainable means of tracking success and ROI.” – “Reliable, third party verified delivery metrics.” – “ROI is not easily informed with this media, therefore hard to sell.” – “Effective ROI metrics/measures; clients want to know if it works to deliver sales.” – “Having a measurement system would be extremely helpful, as clients are always demanding ROI.” – “Provide effective and believable research and not just ridership numbers.” • Innovative Products – “Innovate. Right now, one of the big buzzwords is place-based advertising because it is really innovative and new. Transit in comparison is very old school.” – “As with all OOH media platforms, transit needs to merge with new media formats. . . . Making this tech- nology married with transit and EASY to buy would make transit more attractive.” – “More digital capabilities for using elements of TV com- mercials and online creative [advertising].” – “It’s true that most planners look to billboards first prior to targeting transit media. As long as transit continues to stay innovative and sales reps come in with creative and interesting ideas and technologies, we will continue con- sidering the media as part of our media plans.” – “Bring something to the table that is new and different.” • Cost – “While most transit is very efficient, I think if the overall costs were lower the clients would be more receptive.” – “[Offer] multi-city rates.” – “Cost based on efficiencies compared to other mass media.” • Production Costs – “We have found that production costs can be quite costly. Whereas we buy a vinyl that can be utilized on several out-of-home boards for a relatively low cost, when we have purchased transit advertising, the pro- duction costs are often higher than two months of the space costs.” – “Smaller production fees and turnaround times.” – “Roll up production costs into buy; quit nickel and dime-ing us.” – “Most of our clients love the concept of transit media and it’s exclusively the production costs that turn them off.” – “Lower cost to actually create the wraps.” • Sales – “More productive sales team that understands my business.” – “Friendlier, easier to work with knowledgeable sales force.” – “Need to be able to speak to my overall campaign goals and objectives instead of trying to change the cam- paign’s objectives to fit transit media’s strengths.” – “Need to be in front of the agency to tell us what is new.” – “[Show us] case histories from branding as well as direct response clients.” – “Let the client know how this medium can be used to increase their presence in a market. Offer case studies on how this form of advertising has worked for other clients.” – “I think it’s just a matter of educating the advertisers and the agencies of the advantages of using transit media.” • Image – “Classier.” – “Get rid of the perception that it is downscale.” – “Keep it clean, uncluttered.” • Availability and Flexibility – “More transit opportunities even in mid-size cities. The more a client is exposed to the media the better oppor- tunity for this type of advertising to be recommended.” – “Flexibility in choosing geographic areas or specific bus lines/garages.” – “Shorter production lead times . . . less overall stipula- tions.” – “More accessibility = I have to go out of my way to coor- dinate such a buy.” Summary of Media Planner Quantitative Research The key high-level findings from the media planner quan- titative research are summarized here. Finding: Familiarity with transit media is widespread. Three-quarters of the media planners in the study reported being either extremely or very familiar with transit media. This appears to be a strong number, though there is certainly room for expansion. 52

Finding: Most media planners report being comfortable rec- ommending transit media to clients. Ninety-three percent of respondents agreed with the state- ment, “I’m comfortable recommending transit media to clients.” Only 4% disagreed. Finding: The majority of media planners reported having had a good experience using transit media. More than three-quarters of media planners agreed with the statement, “I have had a good experience with transit media.” Only 2% disagreed. Finding: Transit media are not as widely recommended to advertisers as the previous findings suggest. Seventy-five percent of out-of-home specialists recommend transit frequently, but only 40% of generalist media planners do the same. Moreover, the percentage of out-of-home special- ists who recommend billboards frequently is 86%. Finding: Significant numbers of media planners suspect that advertisers do not perceive transit media positively. Ten percent of media planners disagreed with the state- ment “Clients’ perceptions of transit media are positive.” Another 44% could neither agree nor disagree. Finding: Out-of-home specialists are transit’s biggest fans. Out-of-home specialists are the biggest fans of transit media. They “live” in the world of out-of-home media and therefore have the opportunity to get very familiar with tran- sit (53% are “extremely” familiar vs. 11% of generalist media planners), see or hear of it being deployed successfully, and use it themselves (71% “always” or “frequently” recommend it vs. 40% of generalist media planners). They have a more positive view of the usefulness of transit media than their generalist counterparts. This positive view was seen in the significantly higher scores given by out-of-home specialists than scores given by generalist media planners on eight out of 14 media and marketing objectives. Because the availability of demographic information, audi- ence measurement, and ROI metrics is significantly less important to out-of-home specialists than to generalist media planners, transit’s deficiency in these areas bothers them less. Consequently, compared to generalist media planners, signif- icantly greater percentages of out-of-home specialists view transit as “effective” (82% vs. 46%) and “strongly agree” that they are comfortable recommending transit media to clients (57% vs. 30%). Finding: Generalists with national clients are also very posi- tively disposed toward transit media. Statistically higher percentages of generalists with national clients than out-of-home specialists gave high ratings to tran- sit on several media features. These features include “good value for the money,” “can deliver ROI metrics,” and “offers innovative products.” Generalists with national clients also rated transit higher than out-of-home specialists on some image ratings, most notably “hip” and “sexy.” Overall, their ratings and perceptions of transit were not far behind those of the out-of-home specialists. Their usage, however, was con- siderably behind out-of-home specialists: only 45% indicated that they recommend transit “always” or “frequently” versus 71% of the out-of-home specialists. Also, a much smaller por- tion of generalists with national clients (55%) view transit advertising as “effective” than out-of-home media specialists (82%). The combination of mostly positive perceptions and low usage makes this segment of media planners a highly attractive target. They have their skepticisms, but stand ready to be convinced of transit advertising’s benefits. Finding: Of the three segments of media planners, generalists with local/regional clients are the least positively dis- posed to transit. Relative to the other two segments, the generalists with local/regional clients are just as familiar with transit media, but are not as likely to be frequent recommenders of transit (only 35% “always” or “frequently” recommend). This group of respondents gave transit advertising the lowest ratings on its ability to very effectively achieve 14 media and marketing objectives. On the media features they said were most highly desirable, e.g., delivering exactly what was bought, they gave transit some exceptionally low scores. The generalists with local/regional clients tend to work with smaller media budgets and tend not to view transit as a good value. On image ratings, they gave transit the lowest “effective” score, the lowest “efficient” score, the lowest “inno- vative” score, the lowest “intrusive” score, the lowest “hip” score and the highest “expensive” score. This segment will be the hardest to convince to increase their transit media usage. Any approach must start by addressing the value of transit media, as this segment is the most cost conscious. Finding: Transit media’s strongest perceived function is reach- ing captive audiences. When asked to select the medium, from among billboards, place-based, television, internet and transit, that best accom- plishes each of 14 different media and marketing objectives (for example, “enhance a brand’s image” and “break through 53

clutter”), transit was number one only once: for “reach a cap- tive audience,” which received 43% of media planners’ votes. Transit media received a decent share of votes for being best at achieving market saturation, extending reach, and extend- ing frequency. Finding: Transit media are not homogeneous. An interesting finding is that reaching a captive audience, a media objective often associated with transit media in general, is seen as a capability of rail, not bus. Conversely, the objective of reaching a mass audience is highly associated with bus, but not rail. There seems therefore to be a case for regarding the two arms of transit media as distinct products. They both build brand awareness through increasing reach and frequency, but bus is more appropriate for a mass audience, and rail is more appropriate for a captive audience. Finding: Transit advertising is regarded as supplemental, and therefore discretionary. The majority of media planners in the study regarded transit advertising as supplemental. This categorization makes it a “nice to have” as opposed to a “must have” medium, and therefore one that is high on the list to be cut when budget pressures hit, as they often do. The media objectives that media planners most associate with transit are extending reach and extending frequency—both incre- mental benefits. Consequently, use of transit media appears very much at the mercy of the size of the media budget. If there are leftover dollars once the primary media have been put in place, then transit is an effective way to bolster reach and frequency. Finding: Transit is second to billboards as an advertising medium. The survey revealed that the respective strengths of transit and billboard advertising, in terms of ability to deliver on spe- cific media and marketing objectives, are highly parallel. Among the 14 media and marketing objectives presented, both scored highest for their abilities to achieve market satu- ration, extend reach and extend frequency. The research team concludes from this result that transit media and billboards must be thought of as substitutes and therefore must be in the same consideration set for media planning. However, billboards consistently score higher than transit where both were measured. Billboards’ scores are much stronger than transit’s on meeting the specific media and marketing objectives mentioned above. Also, media planners’ ratings of billboards’ ability to deliver highly desirable media features, like “delivers exactly what was bought” and “can tar- get specific areas or demographic groups” are also signifi- cantly higher than transit’s ratings. Finding: Transit media are not viewed as efficient. Only 38% of respondents said that “efficient” describes transit “very” or “extremely well.” Finding: Views are split on transit advertising’s effectiveness. Eighty-two percent of out-of-home specialists said “effi- cient” describes transit advertising “very” or “extremely well.” Among generalist media planners, only 46% said the same. Finding: Transit advertising is not viewed as innovative. Seventy-seven percent of media planners said that offering innovative products was highly desirable in a medium. Only 33% of respondents said that this statement describes transit completely or very well. This finding was corroborated in the image ratings, where only 25% of respondents said that “innovative” describes transit very or extremely well. Finding: Transit advertising is not viewed as clean. Fifty-eight percent of respondents said that “clean” describes transit advertising “slightly” or “not at all.” Finding: Transit media have additional significant image defi- ciencies, but “downscale” is not among them. In addition to the image descriptors already discussed, the majority of media planners did not find transit “hip,” “intru- sive,” “sexy” or “clean.” On the positive side, they did not find transit “complicated” or “downscale.” Finding: Transit advertising is perceived to be weak in deliver- ing the media features that are most important to media planners. The five most important features of any medium are that it (1) delivers exactly what the media planner bought, (2) offers good value for the money, (3) is able to target specific areas or demographic groups, (4) offers a credible audience measurement system, and (5) offers comprehensive demo- graphic data. None of these was perceived to be among transit advertising’s strengths. Finding: Overall, the media features on which transit scored best were among the least in demand. Transit media’s best score was on “cannot be TiVo’d.” This feature ranked as number 15 in desirability out of the 54

17 presented. Transit media’s next highest ratings were “is easy to learn and stay on top of” (14th in desirability) and “offers 24-hour exposure” (16th in desirability). Finding: Media planners are not receiving sales materials or demographic data they view as effective. Media planners gave sales representatives low ratings on providing useful demographic data and providing effective selling materials. Finding: Media planners’ satisfaction with sales representa- tives is mixed. Sixty-one percent of all media planners surveyed are satis- fied with their transit sales representatives. Thirty percent of all media planners surveyed are only somewhat satisfied, and 9% are not-at-all satisfied. Finding: Media planners with transit-dedicated sales represen- tatives are more satisfied than media planners whose representatives sell multiple media. Half of the media planners in the study have sales repre- sentatives who sell only transit advertising. The other half have transit representatives who sell transit along with other media—most likely other out-of-home media. Whereas 31% of media planners with transit-dedicated representa- tives were very or extremely satisfied with their representa- tives, only 17% of the media planners with multi-media sales representatives were. On the negative side, 34% of media planners with transit-dedicated representatives were somewhat or not-at-all satisfied with their representatives, and 43% of the media planners with multi-media sales rep- resentatives were. Finding: Media planners’ top suggestions for increasing transit advertising’s attractiveness were to develop an audi- ence measurement system and introduce innovative new products. Beyond these top two suggestions, respondents’ sugges- tions fell into the following categories: the cost of transit media, the production costs associated with transit media, sales, the image of transit media and the topics of availability and flexibility. Finding: Media planners’ preferences for new advertising products point to digital. Sixty percent of respondents said that digital displays on platforms, in stations and on bus/railcar interiors would sig- nificantly increase the likelihood of their recommending more transit advertising. Advertiser Interviews Even though researching the attitudes of advertisers was not this project’s main focus, the research team felt it was critical to tap into their thinking about transit advertising. Representatives of 14 advertisers in several different indus- tries were interviewed. Usage of transit media was not a requirement of participation. The research team required only that the interviewee was the person responsible for selecting the media that go into the company’s media plans and that out-of-home media were among the media they could consider using. The discussion guide for these 30-minute telephone calls included many of the same topics researched among media planners: • The media objectives transit is most effective at achieving • The image of transit media • The nature of their experience with transit media • The importance of audience measurement data • How to improve the attractiveness of transit advertising The research team spoke mostly with marketing vice presidents and directors for companies in a fairly wide range of industries. The companies included two global beverages companies, a global maker of networks and communica- tions technology, a global computer manufacturer, a global satellite television provider, a national consumer electron- ics retailer, a national business software company, a regional pharmacy chain, a local television station, two local hospi- tals, and a statewide social services agency. Please note that the small number of respondents, combined with the vari- ety of industries they represent, make this sample far from representative. Therefore these interviews were used for confirmation and elaboration of findings from the media planner study. Media Objectives for which Transit is Appropriate Advertisers view transit advertising as a way of building awareness for their product or service. However, these adver- tisers still see transit advertising as “an ornament on a solid foundation.” Transit is supplemental, a “nice to have,” but among the first things to get cut if dollars run short. Adver- tisers are open to transit when they are introducing a new product or program, and want to saturate the population of a defined area with their message. Several even spoke of the 55

unique executions, i.e., bus wraps and station dominations, as attractive parts of launch efforts due to their “break through” effect. These advertisers, however, referred to tran- sit as a one-off: something they would use in a single set of cir- cumstances as an accent element, but not a recurring part of the media plan. Other advertisers see transit media as offering a unique opportunity to be part of the consumer’s daily life in an up- close fashion. These respondents talked about wanting to “surround the customer with our message” and “catching cus- tomers in their daily routine.” They were enthusiastic about full bus wraps and station dominations. These advertisers are perhaps more likely to include transit as a regular part of the media plan than those discussed in the previous paragraph. Perceived Image of Transit Media Transit advertising was perceived by several of the adver- tisers as being “not cheap.” In particular, the production costs of transit advertising were cited as being high, and a reason to forgo the medium if the budget were to tighten. There were comments, as well, about transit not being efficient. It was seen from several perspectives as not being a precisely tar- geted medium. A couple of respondents complained about not being able to buy specific bus routes, and therefore wast- ing money reaching people they have no interest in reaching. Additionally, some advertisers said they thought transit advertising was downscale and cluttered due to the number of messages that appear together (e.g., inside a bus or railcar). An advertiser who focuses mostly on New York City has an image of transit as upscale and very amenable to targeting consumers at the neighborhood level. One advertiser thought of transit as a dated medium, saying it was “very ’50s and ’60s,” and therefore not for sophisticated brands. Other advertisers were not at all negative about transit, acknowledging that “transit has its place.” Some recognized its ability to be exciting, big and new, as exemplified by bus wraps and station dominations. Some also offered that tran- sit has the ultimate ability to get their ads close, as in “directly in the faces of” their customers, which they saw as extremely valuable. One even saw transit as the medium best positioned to make advertising experiential for consumers. Importance of Audience Measurement Most respondents, when asked, agreed that having mea- surements of the audience targeted and reached would increase their interest in using transit media. One respondent, a regional retailer, said that her company was so focused on tracking sales back to advertising initiatives, that transit media stood very little chance there, except perhaps for a spe- cial event. Most advertisers spoke about experiencing some sort of pressure to demonstrate, through data, the effective- ness and efficiency of their media choices. Having a credible measurement system would make it easier for the advertisers to sell their programs. Limitations of Transit Media A few respondents mentioned limitations of transit media that are worth noting. One local hospital advertiser felt that transit, and perhaps other out-of-home media, did not afford enough space to get across a robust product-selling message. In her mind, there are messages that simply are not appropri- ate for this medium. Another advertiser felt that transit offers only limited reach. This was a national consumer product advertiser. Though this was not a criticism identified in the media planner study, there might be some substance here. Two other advertisers commented that the attractiveness of transit varies by location: in cities where transit “is part of daily life,” it is much more attractive to advertisers than where it is not. Compared to television, which can reach every household with a set, no matter how remote the loca- tion, transit media’s reach is indeed limited. It is also a complication of transit that the audience reached varies from city to city. Advertisers’ Suggestions for Improving Transit Media’s Attractiveness The top suggestions of the advertisers interviewed are to make transit media measurable, make it fresh and exciting, make it more flexible (packaging) and faster to respond (cre- ative), and make it less expensive to produce. Advertising Sales Contractor Interviews Whereas our media planner survey explored the pur- chaser’s view of transit advertising, interviews with advertis- ing sales contractors provided the view from the seller’s per- spective. Many transit agencies have media sales capabilities in-house. However, the purposes in this study were better met by speaking with the external contractors who sell the bulk of transit advertising. The one-on-one telephone interviews of 12 media com- pany executives were focused on getting their perspectives on the major obstacles to greater transit advertising sales growth. Most of these interviews occurred between April and June of 2007. Interviewees included representatives of the largest advertising sales contractors—Clear Channel, CBS Outdoor, Titan Worldwide, Lamar Advertising and Gateway Out- door—as well as a handful of smaller ones. 56

How the Advertising Sales Contractors Sell By way of background, it’s important to understand that advertising sales contractors sell to three different customer types: national media planners (working largely with national clients), local media planners (working with local clients), and advertisers, themselves. One major advertising sales con- tractor estimated that his company did 35% of its transit media sales direct to advertisers, 40% to local media planners and 25% to media planners working on a national scale. Another advertising sales contractor estimated that his com- pany did only 10% direct sales, 35% to local media agencies and 55% to national media agencies. Much of the sales effort of advertising sales contractors— in fact of sales representatives of all media types—is focused on getting media planners acquainted with and excited about the media they represent. There is still a lot of direct selling to advertisers, but the majority of media sales go through media agencies. If the sales representatives are successful in their presentations to media planners, then the representative’s media will be “top of mind” for those media planners as they go back to their jobs of developing media plans for their clients. Beyond presentations, however, those sales represen- tatives who are able to cultivate excellent relationships with media agencies are ultimately the most successful. When the media planner decides to recommend transit as part of the media plan, the media planner contacts the repre- sentative to get whatever specific information (e.g., pricing, availability) he or she needs. Some media planning agencies simply ask media companies to give them a plan for out-of- home. Others develop a formal Request for Proposal that they send to multiple media sellers, specifying their media objectives and their budget. Often, a worksheet is attached specifying the types of media they desire. Then, the media sellers develop their best proposals that the media planner can then choose among. Because each advertising sales contractor represents only a limited selection of transit agencies, any media planner look- ing to buy, for example, transit media in the top 10 U.S. cities has to deal with multiple advertising sales contractors. Infor- mation on the proper contact for the advertising sales contractor representing each city’s transit media is readily available in a well-known resource book called the “SRDS Out-of-Home Advertising Source.” Sometimes, media agen- cies prefer the media sales company to arrange the purchase of all desired cities, even those cities the media sales company does not represent. In these cases, the media sales company will contact its fellow media sales companies to arrange the entire purchase on behalf of the media planning agency. The advertising sales contractors have what they call a cross order arrangement to give the business to a colleague and collect a commission in return. Sales Force Organization The advertising sales contractors we spoke with agreed that transit needs a dedicated sales force in order to avoid a conflict of interest with other media. Where the sales force is not ded- icated to transit, and the same sales force sells other media as well, then transit sales will almost certainly be sub-optimized. Media companies are able to make a higher margin on sales of media that they own than they are on transit media. Tran- sit advertising sales contracts typically require the contractor to pay the transit agency 60% (± 5%) of monthly sales revenue achieved or a guaranteed minimum payment, whichever is higher. After the sales company pays its sales force and over- head, the margins left for the sales companies are 15% to 20% at best, whereas margins on billboard sales can be up to 40%. Therefore, when an advertising sales contractor owns bill- boards and other out-of-home media, but also represents tran- sit agencies, because of the margin differential, the sales rep- resentatives will make more money, and therefore be more highly motivated, to sell billboards. The main implication is that transit agencies should make sure, when hiring a sales contractor, that the sale contractor does not also sell billboard space in the same location. This sets up the potential conflict of interest. If the contractor does have competing media in the area, transit agencies should make sure that the sales efforts are kept separate. Pursuing New Technology and Other New Media Options The media company executives who were interviewed seemed to fully appreciate the need for exciting new options to offer to clients. Several spoke enthusiastically of the inno- vations they are working on—for example, “Glow Skin,” the poster material that remains illuminated in the dark via “electroluminescent technology.” However, they also cited many perceived obstacles to bringing new technologies and other new media options to transit. One perceived issue is lack of interest and/or commit- ment to follow-through on the part of transit agencies. As the advertising sales contractors see it, advertising sales is far from the top of the agenda for public transit agencies. Tran- sit agencies are in the business of providing affordable, safe and efficient transportation to their publics, not the business of selling media space for profit. Besides, revenue generated by advertising sales is generally a lot less than 5% of the entire operating budget of the transit agency. Consequently, only modest internal resources are allocated to advertising sales. It is often made the responsibility of the chief marketer for the agency, who has many other priorities as well. Under these conditions, as the advertising sales contractors see it, it is dif- ficult for them to get the agency access and resources they 57

would need to gain approval for and implement a significant initiative like a new product. One suggestion for addressing the focus/commitment issue was the appointment of a dedicated high-level manager of tran- sit advertising sales, and perhaps other revenue-generating opportunities. This person’s focus would be on generating more revenue for the agency’s operating budget. Such a person would be more of the business world than of the public trans- portation world, and would provide the collaboration and part- nership that the advertising sales contractors are looking for. A handful of transit agencies, including the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority in Georgia, have such a position. Another obstacle to new product and technology develop- ment is the cost of such a program. There is almost always capital required for new programs. Advertising sales contrac- tors are understandably hesitant to make a capital outlay to improve a transit agency’s advertising space inventory when their sales contract is short in duration. If the contract were taken over by a different contractor at the end of the period, not only would the first contractor have been unable to amortize its outlay, it wouldn’t be able to make any money on the sale of the assets, because, very often, the transit agency declares ownership. The research team’s understanding is that the above con- cerns are being addressed today by longer term contracts and the inclusion in contracts of provisions that allow for the recovery of amortized capital investments by the contractor that made them. There is another obstacle to bringing innovative new prod- ucts to transit, and it is possibly the most significant one. Transit agencies get pitched all the time by entrepreneurial companies with innovative new products to sell. Transit TV and Tunnel Vision are two such examples, and there are many, many more. However, adding transit advertising inventory by a party other than the advertising sales contrac- tor is very tricky. Some contracts award the rights to all advertising revenue generated in and on buses, trains, stations and platforms to the advertising sales contractor, and so preclude any discus- sions of bringing in new media from an outside source. Alter- natively, some contracts do allow the transit agency to bring in new media. However, this can be seen as a threat by the advertising sales contractor because now his company would face competition for customers. The first customers targeted by the new media sales people are often existing transit adver- tising clients. In any case, multiple advertising sellers in one market can create confusion among advertisers, which is not helpful to maximizing the transit agency’s realized revenue. There seems to be a stalemate situation here that is very important to resolve for the sake of transit advertising growth. It is beyond the scope of this study to do so. However, there seem to be a few options available. One option is for the advertising sales contractors to develop or purchase their own media innovations. This appears to be the direction at least one advertising sales contractor is heading in for in-car tele- vision screens. A second option is for the advertising sales contractors to subcontract the new media sellers so that the new media, in effect, become part of the advertising sales con- tractor’s inventory. A subcontract alleviates the competitive threat, but either increases the cost of the new media or lessens the new media seller’s margin. A third option is for the transit agency to give the lead sales contractor a Right of First Offer provision in the contract, which gives the sales contractor the option to provide the new media themselves or decline and allow a new vendor to come into the market. The Bay Area Rapid Transit District has used this approach in its contract with Titan Outdoor with appar- ent success. A final idea is laissez-faire. Many new media companies claim that the new media attract new advertisers to transit advertising. They should be asked to formally document this as being the case. If they can document it, then the competi- tive stakes are reduced, and the advertising sales contractor and the new media vendor can co-exist. The New Product Pipeline In addition to the electroluminescent panels (“Glow Skin”) mentioned previously, an advertising sales contractor men- tioned video screens installed in rail cars and buses; although such screens are available now, this advertising sales contrac- tor was developing its own in-house system. Some advertis- ing sales contractors mentioned being in the early stages of investigating digital signage, e.g., as bus sides. There was also mention of a clear plastic, overhead hand grip with space for an ad above the opening. Sales Contractors’ Understanding of What Customers Want According to advertising sales contractors, clients want advertising opportunities that are new and different. They want opportunities that are big and bold and that break through the advertising clutter. They want hard numbers proving the effectiveness and efficiency of the medium. They want evidence that the out-of-home campaign ran as planned. They also often want consistent programs from city to city (e.g., bus benches in the top 20 cities). Advantages of Transit Advertising A key objective of the advertising sales contractor inter- views was to understand how the sellers of transit advertising are “pitching the product” to customers. When asked about 58

the leading attributes of transit, its key selling points, they spoke mostly about the tremendous reach and frequency of transit advertising. As one advertising sales contractor exec- utive paraphrased the sales message, “I can put you in front of four million people a day.” The most frequently mentioned unique aspect of transit is its ability to reach audiences that cannot be reached by other out-of-home media. Several advertising sales contractors talked about transit’s ability to go to residential neighbor- hoods and suburban areas, where billboards are frequently zoned out. Others saw the same uniqueness, but spoke of reaching audiences in urban centers, from which billboards are also often excluded. The point may be that if a consumer is not commuting in a car, then, for the most part, they are not viewing billboards. Transit is in the urban centers, on the highways and in the suburbs. As one advertising sales con- tractor put it, “Buses go where people go: they cover more area, they get into the heart of the community, they achieve more.” Another advantage of transit mentioned was its intrusive- ness: whether the audience wants to see the ad or not, it’s there. It can’t be skipped, shut off, or thrown out. Also men- tioned was the speed with which ads can get put up and their cost advantage relative to billboards. Challenges of Selling Transit Most advertising sales contractor executives interviewed commented on transit being a tough medium to sell. They pointed to the fact that transit has to be presented to media planners and advertisers because they rarely ask for it them- selves. As one advertising sales contractor executive said, “You have to work at selling transit.” According to advertis- ing sales contractors, possible explanations for the difficulty of selling transit include the following: • Transit is not considered a mainstream medium. • Advertisers want new and exciting, and transit is neither. • Transit is perceived as being seen only by the least desirable populations from a demographic standpoint. • Some transit authorities simply do not do a good job with cleaning and maintenance, and their advertising spaces are harder to sell. • Route-specific advertising is not allowed, essentially forc- ing the advertiser to buy unwanted ad space. In the absence of an established audience measurement system, many sales representatives are improvising. Often, they develop visuals using full-system route maps, updated with locations of shops, restaurants and other destinations along the routes where targeted consumers are likely to be found. The point, as one advertising sales contractor put it, is to “effectively show that [their ads] are out there, the desired audience is seeing them, and that what the advertiser is get- ting is substantial.” Another advertising sales contractor, rec- ognizing that the large media agencies want to see numbers, devised his own methodology to calculate reach and fre- quency numbers from transit advertising. Advertising sales contractors talked about the difficulty of selling transit in cities outside of the top 10 to 20 cities. Quite often, transit media from one or several of these cities is bun- dled with the purchase of the larger cities. According to the advertising sales contractor, the smaller cities would other- wise remain unsold. The consequence, however, is that the smaller cities are sold at a significant discount. Stories were also shared of transit being used as a sales “kicker” to sweeten a billboard deal. Many of the advertis- ing sales contractors own multiple types of media in a city, based on the strategy of wanting to offer one-stop shopping to media planners. To entice a media planner to purchase its billboards that are, for example, less well located than a competitor’s billboards, the media company will include transit ads as a free bonus with the purchase of their bill- boards. This type of tactic gets the transit ads sold, but it certainly lessens transit advertising’s value in the eyes of customers. Suggestions for Increasing Transit Advertising Sales In addition to the right sales force organization and finan- cial motivation, as discussed previously, the following are additional advertising sales contractor suggestions for increas- ing transit advertising sales: • Refresh the medium with exciting new products. • Develop a third-party validated audience measurement system. • Publish research testifying to the effectiveness of transit media. • Reduce restrictions on categories of advertisers allowed by transit agencies (e.g., alcohol is often an excluded category). • Make more large format opportunities, like bus wraps, available. • Develop a system for demonstrating the product in the field to media planners (much like the computer technol- ogy allowing billboard sales people to show the creative that is up on any billboard at any time). • Make full-system route maps accessible electronically. • Develop visuals that show the extent of geographic cover- age offered by transit. • Make better quality demographic data, at least on riders, available. 59

• Add bus benches or other street furniture to the available inventory. • Help especially the junior media planners in the depart- ment who might shy away from transit because of its com- plexity (multiple products, different from city to city) and also because of the lack of measurement system. Transit Agency Survey Nineteen responses to the transit agency survey were received, from the roughly 300 invitations sent to transit agency marketing executives. Of the 19, six were from top 10 media markets, nine were from media markets ranked 11 to 50, and four were in media markets beyond the top 50. It is impossible to call such a small sample representative. With this in mind, here is a summary of responses to some of the key survey questions. Attitude Toward Trying New Media Several advertising sales contractors the research team spoke with had the perspective that transit agencies sometimes appear to have little interest in pursuing new products. There- fore this question was asked in the transit agency survey: “Are you in favor of trying new media?” Of the 19 responses, 17 said yes, one (from one of the top 10 markets) said no, and one (from one of the markets ranked 11 to 50) was not sure. New Media Tried Among respondents from top 10 media markets, the new media tried were wireless Internet on cars, in-tunnel adver- tising, station domination, and on-board television. Among respondents from media markets ranked 11 to 50, the only new medium indicated was bus wraps. The same was found for the respondents from the media markets ranked greater than 50. Not surprisingly, the larger market agencies show more advancement in the new media they have tried. Ideas for Increasing Advertising Sales The following list of ideas was offered by the survey respon- dents when asked: “What specific ideas do you have for increasing growth of advertising sales?” Their responses show an appreciation of media planners’ desires for credible data; for big, breakthrough advertising canvases; and for electronic media opportunities. • Respondents from top 10 media markets – Wrap inside/outside of rail cars – Station domination – Web advertising – Present solid data to support transit’s viability – Communicate in terms of cost per thousand audience members (CPM) and positive demographics – Allow more innovative approaches for vendors (e.g., sampling, in-station handouts) – Introduce new bus design – Transit TV • Respondents from media markets ranked 11 to 50 – Clearinghouse to connect with national advertisers – Add electronics – Third-party media trades – Wrapped trains – LCD signs at bus shelters – LCD screens on bus backs – Bundle transit with other media – Use a national sales company—a regional one doesn’t provide same access to national advertisers – Light rail kiosks – Re-zone to permit bus shelter advertising – Sell reflective material for a premium – Offer free ad design help – Sell ads on tickets and passes • Respondents from media markets ranked 50 – Allow larger ads – Place advertising on ride guide – Offer special deals, e.g., buy two get one free – More displays and more promotion Obstacles to Selling More Transit Media Respondents’ perspectives on obstacles to increasing tran- sit media sales are these: • Finite numbers of buses • Limits on how much advertising consumers will tolerate • Limited understanding of potential customers: prefer- ences, buying behaviors • Misperceptions: the audience is bus riders and an undesir- able demographic • Low perceived value • Signage ban • Transit not considered; when it is, it’s thought to reach just transit riders The array of responses above is a good reminder that there are many facets to the challenge of driving higher advertising sales. Public transit systems’ advertising growth can be ham- pered by governmental restrictions, rider complaint and even limited inventory. Addressing these obstacles falls beyond the scope of this study. 60

Opportunities for an Industry-wide Resource Respondents were also asked to state the opportunities they saw for an industry-wide organization like APTA to assist with advertising revenue growth. One theme in the responses is connection: connecting transit agencies to national advertisers, connecting transit agencies to their contractors and other ven- dors for improving business relationships, and connecting transit agencies to each other for exchange of best practices and other strategies and insights. The responses are as follows: • Have a way to connect transit agencies with advertisers, especially national advertisers. • Conduct market research into rider purchasing power. • Present an information forum for contractors/vendors. • Do an assessment of new media safety and appeal. • Provide a means for transit agencies to share experiences with each other. • Create a national database of transit agency advertising. • Get involved with approving use of digital LCD screens. 61

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TRB’s Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Report 133: Practical Measures to Increase Transit Advertising Revenues explores strategies designed to significantly increase transit’s share of total advertising expenditures. The report examines advertising decision makers’ perceptions about current and future transit advertising products and highlights a strategic responsive communications plan designed to improve those perceptions and increase transit revenue.

An executive summary and PowerPoint presentation on this report are available online.

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