Seat-back DOOH Ad Screens Trialed in Madrid’s Taxi Fleet

August 9, 2024 by Dave Haynes

The Spanish digital signage CMS software firm DENEVA has partnered with two other companies to have a run at making a successful digital OOH ad model out of the back seats of taxis – using AI to offer segmented, geolocated ad targeting.

The trial run of what’s been called DigiTaxi involves taxis in Madrid, the big city about three hours drive south of DENEVA’s head office. The project is a collaboration between the outdoor media company Gran Pantalla, integrator Screensor Tech, and DENEVA for its management and measurement software.

“The implementation of our digital signage software in taxis not only enhances passenger experience but also opens new opportunities for advertisers,” says Juan Carlos Martín, Sales Manager of DENEVA. “This is another step forward in the transport sector, where we already have extensive experience, and the trend is the unification of multimodal transport in a single content management platform like DENEVA. Therefore, we are moving towards a more fluid and efficient integration of different transport modes under a single technological solution.”

The initial deployment started in June and the plan/hope is to broaden the screen network to taxi fleets in other major cities in Spain, aiming for more than 600 screens in the coming months.

“For Gran Pantalla, this represents an evolution in our advertising offering, where a large part of our assets are digital. With this new model in a premium location like taxis and the ability to personalize content, we go beyond in reaching clients for advertisers, offering a personalized experience according to the type of audience,” says Marta Rodríguez, General Director of Gran Pantalla.

If you travel, it’s likely you’ve come climbed into the back of a taxi somewhere that had screens either attached to the back of front seat headrests, or fixed in some other way to reach the passengers – the idea being that the passengers are captive and looking for a distraction, like a screen. It’ a model that’s been around forever and I’ve never been convinced it is all that effective or delivers much revenue to the media company or the taxi service. The biggest challenge is winning the attention battle when most people have mobile broadband and smartphones.