About a year ago Metro Trains Melbourne started to place advertisements inside their trains, when they signed a $10 million, six year contract with media operator S&J Media Group. Thinking back to my daily commute led me to believe private training colleges were spending up big, but that isn’t a scientific process. So which companies are actually buying the space?
To answer this question I did a walkthrough of a Comeng train the other day and started counting – I found that each carriage with a cab has 10 advertising panels inside, with the centre carriage having an extra two panels that are just promotions for the advertising company. Each panel is located above the window line is is around 120 cm long by 30 cm high, and the advertisements repeated themselves when you moved carriages.
Panel 1: ‘Devine Homes’ and ‘Max Therapy Institute’ (private training college):
Panel 2: ‘Holmsglen TAFE’ and ‘WEP Host Families’ (exchange students):
Panel 3: ‘A-Bike folding bikes’ and ‘MyMac computer store’:
Panel 4: ‘Starfish Music’ website and ‘SAE Institute’ (private training college):
Panel 5: ‘Stream Diagnostics methane breath testing’ and ‘Avila College’ (girls secondary college):
Panel 6: ‘Australian College of Hair Design and Beauty’ (private training college) and ‘People Dynamic HR services’:
Panel 7: ‘Shuji Sushi’ take away food and ‘The Gordon’ TAFE:
Panel 8: ‘Golden Waters’ housing estate and ‘Melbourne Snow Travel Expo’:
Panel 9: ‘Eureka Skydeck’ and ‘Charles Sturt University’:
Panel 10: ‘Footscray City Film School’ and ‘Regis Group’ aged care careers:
When I divided the advertisers up by industry and put the data into a chart, we get this:
It seems like my initial thoughts were correct – educational institutions are the main purchasers of advertising space aboard Melbourne’s trains.
Sources
- Mumbrella: S&J Media Group wins $10m contract to put ads inside Melbourne trains (December 2011)
- S&J Media Group website
Footnote
Going by this advert I found the other day, the going rate for a single 1/2 size advertising panel is $1 a day. I wonder how long the commitment is for, and whether it is part of a bulk deal for more than one panel.
Was there a previous contract with Connex? I recall these first appeared in the Alstom-refurbished Comeng trains quite a while back now but they have since spread to the rest of the Comeng fleet and of course the other advertisements on the outside of selected Siemens and X’Trapolis carriages
My daily commute last year was often greeted with the Australian Nursing Federation campaign for more pay in those panels.
I also have a recollection that Connex also had advertisements inside the trains. Grom what I can remember they were never that successful – the majority of the panels saying ‘call 9xxx xxxx’ to advertise here’.
The current contract for external advertising on Metro Trains is with a company called ‘TorchMotion’:
http://mumbrella.com.au/torchmotion-lands-metro-trains-deal-55544
And advertising at stations is yet another mob:
http://mumbrella.com.au/melbourne-metro-trains-outdoor-apn-jc-decaux-35720
yep – I remembered something like that – off memory they said something along the lines of ‘Call Shane at JC Decaux’ whose name is also seen at the illuminated signs at stations as you pointed out, on the backs of some Telstra public phones as well as bus stops in the City of Monash … not much here currently
http://www.jcdecaux.com.au/
Most other councils have bus shelters around my part of Melbourne (Greater Dandenong, Kingston, Knox, Glen Eira) and tram shelters in the city area are from ‘Adshel’
http://www.adshel.com.au/
Those a-bikes don’t seem to have done very well. They are having a clearance sale on e-bay.
Turns out those bikes were invented by the guy behind Sinclair Computers in the 1980s:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-bike
Reminds me of the old “Train ads by Locomotion” dot matrix display that never displayed any ads except for the original message.
Those ‘Locomotion’ screens upped the useless stakes quite a bit – I’ve got a feeling that nobody every signed up to advertise on them?
There is a bit more more about them over on the Railpage Australia forums:
http://www.railpage.com.au/f-t11329870.htm