Drive by: advertising on wheels

A picture is worth a thousand words – and a picture on a moving car can reach thousands of people every day. Antonio Coli, CEO of Carmedia, a young company that provides advertising on private vehicles, tells BR about the reach of such campaigns and what plans the firm has in store.

By Otilia Haraga

How many cars are generally used for a campaign implemented by Carmedia?

Our media platform allows us to deploy between 1 and 1,000 vehicles. Typically the number of vehicles used in an advertising campaign depends on the impact and visibility that is requested by our clients. In a city like Bucharest between 50 and 100 cars is a good number to ensure great visibility.

What would such a campaign cost a client?

The cost of a campaign varies depending on the duration, number of vehicles deployed and type of coverage. In general the price of a branded vehicle starts at EUR 150/month. In a city like Bucharest, one vehicle can generate up to 120,000 views per month.

Worth mentioning is that men and women from 18-34 years old spend 20 hours per week in cars, a 33 percent increase over the last five years. Both the amount of time people spend outside the home and the length of commutes are increasing.

This presents an excellent opportunity to take advantage of new types of outdoor advertising, notably advertising on private cars, which offers advantages that cannot be found through broadcast, static billboards or print media.

Also, 29 percent of people say outdoor advertising has prompted a visit to a retail store within a week. A significant amount of shopping occurs on the way to and from work, and purchases are also often contemplated on the way.

A moving vehicle generates 2.5 times more attention than a static billboard. A single car in an urban environment generates 5,000 impressions per day.

How do you select the cars and drivers that you will use?

After subscribing to our website, every driver is reviewed and eventually pre-approved. Once we have an advertising project, we select them based on the area where they drive and their habits and check their profile with a phone interview to make sure they match our client’s needs and brand specifics. At the end of December 2012, we had 5,000 drivers available in the biggest cities in Romania (3,000 in Bucharest alone), but this number is growing every day.

Our drivers are students, athletes, people going out several times per week, moms with kids shopping two or three times a week, etc. So, for example, if our clients are targeting students for their campaign or promotion, we will select only students who park their car at the university campus, who drive to places where other students are, such as faculties, pubs, concerts etc. The result is that their car will most likely be visible where other students are. With the same principle we can target different groups: businesspeople, women with kids, people doing sport and many others in very specific and targeted areas of the country.

Any company that sells to the public – food and beverage, retailers, telecom, pharma etc – can potentially derive large benefits from our media solutions.

How do you measure the reach of campaigns in more concrete terms?

It all starts from tracking every vehicle with a proprietary GPS solution providing in real time the position of every vehicle as well as the number of kilometers, the time spent while parked and all movements in a given period of time. Additionally we use industry standards and independent market research companies to certify the number of views that every vehicle can generate in a month in cities like Bucharest. Based on our previous experience and the advertising projects we have done in Romania, every vehicle can generate an average of 120,000-140,000 views per month depending on the season and the targeted area.

What are Carmedia’s strategic plans in 2013?

We have very aggressive plans for 2013. First of all we want to consolidate on the Romanian market, as this is where we have our headquarters and excellence center. In parallel, we will continue to develop our presence in other European countries. We started in Spain and Germany in 2012 and we are looking to expand to Poland, Austria and Turkey in 2013. On the product side, we will shortly launch a new solution to generate traffic online (Facebook and other social media).

What turnover and profit do you estimate for Carmedia in 2013?

Final numbers for 2012 are not ready yet but we posted EUR 50,000 in revenues in Romania. We project EUR 300,000 in revenues in 2013 in Romania alone.

How far would you say the car advertising market will develop over the next few years?

Unfortunately, the advertising market has suffered quite a lot from the crisis and companies are looking for low-cost, creative and innovative advertising solutions. We launched our platform in the Romanian market only four months ago; however, we have had a very good response and active projects already.

otilia.haraga@business-review.ro

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