Technology

How an advertisement reaches a moving bus

The hard part of transit advertising is not the screen. It is keeping screens on moving vehicles playing the right thing at the right time, and being able to show afterwards that they did.

  1. Cloud Content library
  2. 4G and 5G Delivery
  3. Bus media player Local cache
  4. Digital screen Playback
  5. Advertisement On route
  6. Proof of play Reporting

Stage by stage

What happens at each link

01 / Cloud

One content library

Every advertisement in the network lives in one place. Campaigns are assembled there: which creative, which routes, which dates, and how often it should come round.

Nothing is copied onto a memory card and carried to a depot. That is the difference between a handful of screens and a network you can actually operate.

02 / Delivery

4G and 5G to the vehicle

Each bus carries a mobile data connection. New content and schedule changes are pushed down to the player over that link, so a campaign can start, change or stop while the fleet is out on the road.

03 / Player

A media player on the bus

Behind the screen sits a small computer holding the playlist. It keeps its own copy of every file it needs, and that local cache is the part that makes the system dependable.

Mobile coverage along a bus route is never continuous. There are tunnels, dead pockets and congested cells. Playback cannot be allowed to depend on any of that.

04 / Screen

Playback in the cabin

The screen runs through the operating hours of the vehicle, following the schedule set in the cloud: what plays, in what order, and how often each item repeats.

05 / Advertisement

Your advertisement on the route

Your creative plays to the passengers on the routes you booked. Because the route is fixed and the timetable repeats, the same commuters see it on the way home, and again the next morning.

06 / Proof of play

A record that comes back

The player records what it played and when, and reports that back. Screens report whether they are online.

That record is what turns a campaign from a promise into something checkable. It also means a fault is usually visible to us before it would be noticed anywhere else.

Reliability

The two failures that matter, and what happens

Signal drops

Playback carries on

Because the player already holds the files, losing the mobile connection does not interrupt the screen. The bus keeps playing its schedule and catches up on any changes when the connection returns.

Screen offline

We see it, and we say so

A screen that stops reporting shows as offline on our side. The fault gets attended to, and time lost is accounted for rather than quietly billed.

Where this is going

Connected media infrastructure, not an advertising agency

Each stage below is a real step rather than a slogan, and the network moves through them city by city as operators join.

  1. Screen
  2. Connected screen
  3. Connected bus
  4. Connected fleet
  5. Transit media network
  6. Advertising platform

Put your advertisement on the network

Tell us the routes and the dates. We will confirm what is available and what it costs.