Road to Enlightenment

Bus advertising captures and captivates consumers on the move across Britain

Road to Enlightenment

The Road to Enlightenment is CBS Outdoor’s largest study on how Bus advertising captures and captivates consumers on the move across the UK. Utilising a range of methodologies including focus groups, online forums and online questionnaires, over 1200 respondents were probed regarding their attitudes to Buses and the ads they carry.

The research focused on five key areas:-

What evidence is there that us advertising is truly effective?
What value do consumers place on Bus advertising?
What products do consumers believe could effectively be advertised on Buses?
How do Bus ads work creatively compared to ads on other poster formats?
Are there differences between how Bus advertising is perceived in London and
elsewhere in the UK?

In terms of effectiveness, 86% of people spontaneously talked in detail about a Bus ad they’d seen, with over half of them talking about an ad they’d seen in the past 3 days. In addition, people freely admitted they’d responded to a Bus ad, with an impressive 80% of people saying they’d done something as a result of seeing a Bus ad, whether this was a direct purchase, looking for more information or putting a brand on their consideration list. Consumers come into contact with Bus ads throughout the day at many different times and in many different mindsets. On average they see them on 5 different occasions across the day with 77% people seeing them while commuting.

To investigate the extent to which consumers value Bus advertising, respondents were tasked with estimating the cost of placing an ad on various poster formats. We provided a benchmark figure for a shopping mall 6 sheet (Index 100) and then consumers were asked how much more or less expensive they thought the other formats would be. We found that consumers thought that Bus was a high value medium. We then compared this with actual ratecard costs and discovered that the difference between consumers’ perceived value and ratecard value is greatest for Bus.

When it came to product suitability for Bus advertising, consumers felt that virtually any product could effectively promote itself using the format. Film and entertainment was felt to be the most appropriate category, but the rest weren’t far behind!.

An innovative mapping exercise investigated how well consumers felt the same ad might work on different poster formats. One of the maps (see download) clearly demonstrates how consumers regard the poster format as being largely immaterial in terms of how it “frames” the creative. All formats work equally well in terms of impact and driving brand appeal.

Finally, there was no significant difference between London and non-London respondents’ attitudes to Bus advertising. Bus advertising was equally effective across the whole of the UK.

Download 1 Pager

Download the one-page version of the Road to Enlightenment presentation in PowerPoint format. This is a brief overview of the research complete with important stats.