KEY POINTS:
Commuters typically board their bus, pay their ticket and make a beeline for their favourite seat.
But advertising firm APN Outdoor is betting that some are looking downwards to a new advertising medium - bus floor ads.
The company, which controls the majority of bus advertising in New Zealand, got serious with bus floor ads last month in a campaign for Telecom.
APN Outdoor spokesman Matt Nicholls said the campaign had been effective and it was likely to be repeated. But it was a specialist campaign and not all of Auckland's 1000 buses would be fitted with the ads.
"It was tested earlier on a couple of buses in a campaign for the New Zealand Army and went well. Currently we have around 15 buses in Auckland with the Telecom campaign," he said.
Nicholls said that the layout of the different models of buses limited how many could be fitted with the floor ads.
He said like other bus advertising, the floor ads had the best impact with young males and worked by catching people where they were not used to seeing ads.
In another innovation, ads for Telecom Boost were placed on seat backs.
Steve Wade is the marketing manager for Infratil owned Stagecoach Buses - which contracts the bus advertising to APN. Wade said the company was cautious not to do too much advertising and media in buses. Some services - such as Stagecoach's inner city Link circuit - had video screens which were upgraded for sound in new buses.
He said other new buses would be fitted with screens.
Wade said that the company was being careful to ensure that commuters were not barraged with ads.
* APN Outdoor is a part of APN News & Media, which publishes the New Zealand Herald.
