Digital Out of Home: a growing market for hyper-local transport data

11 Feb 2015 by Emer Coleman

Monthly signups to TransportAPI are now averaging in excess of 40 a month and with more than 1,100 developers and organisations signed up to use TransportAPI we thought we’d share the demand curve. While it might be logical to think that interest would be highest in the transport sector in fact we are seeing huge growth in the integration of transport data into Digital Out Of Home (DOOH) campaigns as well as in the leisure and retail sector.

We particularly love the new campaign for @hivehome (a British Gas Connected Homes product) created by @liveposterUK @Posterscope and @cloudandcompass using TransportAPI data.

Hive DOOH campaign. Image credit: Live Poster
Hive DOOH campaign. Image credit: Live Poster

Given that @hivehome users can set up geo-location-based reminders to change their heating or water temperature depending on how close by they are, it makes total sense to integrate realtime passenger information direct to their location. According to Pamela Brown, head of marketing and insight at British Gas Connected Homes (a division of British Gas) quoted recently about the project in Marketing Week the campaign is steeped in a more data-driven media plan in order to hit target consumers with relevant messages like ‘The 274’s on its way – Turn on your heating without delay’.

According to Screenmediamag.com DOOH revenue growth is exploding with UK revenue in the sector growing 30% year on year. The total sectoral spend from April to June 2014 was £68.3m the largest quarterly digital revenue ever recorded for the UK, representing just over a quarter of total outdoor expenditure.

A quick glance at our sectoral analysis of our TransportAPI users would seem to endorse that trend with innovators and developers representing the single biggest user base with Digital agencies the next largest sectoral slice.

pie-chart@2xWe hope that DOOH will continue to go from strenght to strength as a market for hyperlocal transport data. And for other great examples of the integration of transport data in innovative ways check out Screenreach and Toothpick another two of our clients using TransportAPI content in interesting ways.

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