Transport For London Renews Giant Ad Concessions For Rail And Bus Systems
September 16, 2024 by Dave Haynes
Global will continue to manage the rail estate, including advertising sites on the Tube, London Overground, DLR, Tram and across the Elizabeth line, while JCDecaux will continue to manage the advertising at more than 4,700 bus shelters across London.
Global covers 272 London Underground stations, more than 120,000 underground billboards, 83 London Overground stations, 45 DLR stations, 39 tram stops, Victoria Coach Station and 40 Elizabeth Line stations. JCDecaux sells ads on 612 digital advertising panels and more than 9,000 traditional paper ad panels on bus shelters.
The announcement came after what TfL describes was a “very competitive tendering process” to secure the contract for two of the world’s most valuable advertising estates. The contracts will begin next April and run for eight years, with an option for TfL to extend for a further two years,
TfL says it will work with its media partners “to bring new, innovative advertising to the millions of people who use London’s transport network every day. Building on the current approach, Global and JCDecaux’s successful bids demonstrated how they will further utilize data, digitization and the vast scope of TfL’s lucrative advertising space to connect brands with the right audiences.”
An interesting aspect of the tender was sustainability, something that should be instructive for North American media companies.
As part of the tender, TfL asked bidders to consider the environmental impact of advertising and to help TfL continue supporting the Mayor in his aim to make London Net Zero by 2030. To help achieve this, TfL is converting lighting in advertising panels within stations to be LED lighting, which uses up to 60 per cent less energy than traditional lighting while providing around 10 per cent brighter light. Work is also underway to convert lighting in all bus shelters across London, including those used in advertising panels, to LED lighting in the coming months.
Ad revenues generates about £150m for TfL in the last financial year – money the organization says is reinvested back into the public transport network.
Tendering for the advertising contracts began in October 2023, with the new bus shelter and rail contracts both starting on 1 October 2024 with advertising commencement on 1 April 2025.
It’s a very big deal and I suspect it was going to be very hard to dislodge incumbents, especially very large ones like JCDecaux and Global. One somewhat unique aspect of how TFL does things is it built, owns and runs the infrastructure for the underground DOOH network, so unlike many to most DOOH networks related to transport systems, TfL would get a much bigger slice of the ad revenue pie than when the media company makes the capital and operating investment in the screens and related gear.
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