More than a year after ending the pilot program that first put televisions in the back of New York City cabs, the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission is offering vendors a chance to bring back video screens that offer information, entertainment and advertising to passengers.
The TLC issued a tall order to vendors in an RFP posted online this month: Design a video-screen system that will allow passengers to track their trip via GPS, pay by credit card and access news and entertainment programming. The wireless system should also allow the commission to send text messages to drivers, according to the RFP.
It is a proposition far more defined and complex than the city’s previous effort, which used mainly portable DVD players that ran a loop of programming on a back-seat screen. That program, which launched in 2002 and ran only a year, allowed several companies to install the TV platform of their choice in taxis.
Those systems were removed in August 2003. TLC commissioner Matthew Daus said the program was intended for a one-year stint, and did what it was intended to do. “It led us to find out what people like and don’t like,” Daus said. “As a result, there are a lot of other cities that are doing that—not just taking that idea, but refining it and adding a whole lot of things.”
Focus groups have shown New Yorkers would support news, weather, sports and entertainment updates such as movie trailers, local events and theater information, according to the commission’s RFP. Focus groups were less receptive to TV commercials, though “short video clips” could be ad-based, the RFP said. E-commerce options such as movie tickets and restaurant listings could also provide revenue.
One of the companies that intends to respond to the New York RFP is Interactive Taxi, a subsidiary of Targeted Media Partners in New York that operates similar systems in Boston, Chicago and soon San Francisco. “This is a permission-based system … that combines the power of television [with] the immediacy and depth of the Internet,” CEO Corey Gottlieb said. “We have what makes out-of-home ads great, because we reach people close and closer to the point of purchase.”
The interactive aspect of the screens was an asset for a Lincoln-Mercury campaign that ran in Chicago, said Younghee Wong, associate media director at WPP’s Media-edge:cia. “They can measure how many people touch the screen and how deep they go into the site,” she said. In a month, the number of riders accessing the ad’s platform had exceeded projections by 65 percent, Wong added.
Gottlieb said his firm sold $1 million in media for 100 cabs in one quarter during New York’s pilot program. Neither he nor other companies would disclose revenue projections for a future system.
About 100 Boston cabs are served by another New York firm, TV in Motion, whose system plays four 15-minute segments via DVD. Each segment has five minutes total of 10-, 15- and 30-second ads for the Boston Symphony, Go Boston and the United Way, among others.
Passengers in New York would not be forced to watch the TVs. The TLC is requiring vendors to include a mute button and a dimmer switch for the backlit screen.
NY Taxi Commission Revisits TV Screens, Posts Online RFP
