Disney, Netflix, Google first to advertise on digital ribbon screens in London Underground

Dive Brief:

Exterion Media and Transport for London (TfL) announced via press release the launch of new digital ribbon screens at certain London Underground stations. Full-motion ads on the London Underground were four-times more engaging than traditional ad formats, per research by Exterion and Bournemouth University cited in the press release.
The initiative is launching with campaigns for Disney's "Mary Poppins Returns," Netflix's "Bandersnatch," Google's Pixel 3 mobile phone and New Year's ads for easyJet and O2, The Drum reported.
The new 42-inch, high-definition screens span the length of the stations' main escalators. The digital ribbons use a full-motion format, which allows an ad to flow across the length of the screen. The screens are the first of eight to be unveiled by mid-2019.

Dive Insight:

The Exterion-TfL digital ribbon displays present new opportunities for marketers to grab commuters' attention with eye-catching visuals. It's estimated that the displays will reach a large audience across 15 million individual journeys each month and provide entertaining, memorable experiences for consumers at key moments during their daily routines. The new ribbon displays follow last year's launch of new LCD full-motion D12 and D6 screens in Underground stations.

Billboards and other out-of-home (OOH) displays are a decades-old marketing format, but marketers are taking their OOH strategies in new, innovative directions by incorporating digital and interactive elements. OOH spend increased 1.2% from 2016 to 2017, reaching $7.7 billion, per data from the Outdoor Advertising Association of America. OOH spend is projected to reach $33 billion, according to a Magna Intelligence study.

OOH investments often pay off for marketers. Along with research that showed the full-format ads to be four times more engaging that traditional ad formats, the ads also enhanced positive brand sentiment and audience action, and increased online searches for a brand or category, after viewing the ad.

On a similar note, when brands devote 15% or more of their budgets to OOH, they can see a 24% boost in brand trust, 106% increase in perception of brand quality and 275% jump in customer loyalty, according to a study by IPG Mediabrands’ OOH division Rapport. Marketers are most frequently turning to OOH for branding building and sales activation.