Tunnel vision

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a town planner by training, who has in the past worked on various infrastructure projects in the country and abroad.

The platform holds allure for both mass transit authorities and advertisers. Usually short on funds, transit systems are always seeking new sources of revenue. But for in-tunnel advertising to have an impact, every little nut and bolt had to fall in place, looking at pixel effect and safety considerations, with the display box that functions as a crude camera.

The result, if you are a rider on that route, is dramatic. It promises to get even better with more animation, as is being done in the second phase of the project, when big brands engage their own creatives to pack some fun elements into the final execution—pop-outs, sound effects, the works! So you would soon have a Shah Rukh Khan thrusting a Pepsi Mycan at an unsuspecting commuter, or perhaps another in which he’s flaunting an Airtel handset.

“That’s our vision of the final application,” enthuses Vohra. “There will certainly be more interactivity in this media as the months roll by.” The technology does make a whole lot of multi-media things possible.

Studies abroad anyway indicate that such interactive, in-transit displays have a high recall, averaging over 80%. The 15 seconds format that’s being used for the Kotak Life ad is also standard, as it’s been found that beyond that length the novelty effect begins to wear off and fatigue sets in.

As the display boxes are energy guzzlers, consuming 11 kv for a 15 second effect, repeated every four minutes (the frequency at which the trains passes the installation), the C2E design team has put in place sensors that automatically switch off the light during the intervening, inactive hours, that is, when there are no commuters to view the display from their windows.

Interestingly, unlike a TV slot or a billboard, the in-tunnel ad units are priced per contact (that is, per metro rider) because, as the logic goes, captive audience can be numbered. Such precise targeting is generally impossible with other OOH media.