Transit Advertising Helps with Bottom Line

Community Transit’s Swift bus rapid transit vehicles are intentionally different from the rest of our fleet. They are longer than most buses (62 vs. 60 feet), quieter because they are hybrid electric and they have a unique graphic design.

That carefully-crafted look changed a little this month with the advent of advertising on Swift. We kept Swift vehicles free of ads for the first six months to help people recognize our new service. That moratorium is over, and 10 of 15 Swift buses are available for advertising, both outside and in. So far, Titan Outdoor has placed ads on four Swift buses.

Titan just won Community Transit’s bus ad contract this spring.  They are excited about reaching new markets in Snohomish County, and we are hopeful of increasing the revenue we get to help support our service. Ads on Swift buses will be very targeted, for instance, since Swift travels the Highway 99 corridor from 5 a.m. to midnight six days a week. With more than 75,000 residents and 30,000 jobs with 1/4 mile of Highway 99, that’s a good place to be.

Our Double Tall buses, expected to hit the streets this fall, will also become rolling billboards. They provide extra value to advertisers because they provide an especially large canvas, so to speak, and those images will roll through Seattle and up and down I-5 easily seen above traffic.

Bus advertising done right can be very striking and memorable. I especially like ads designed specifically for their application on transit vehicles – like the one that showed a smoker’s mouth positioned around the bus tailpipe. A more pleasant image was the “Lifesaver bus” on articulated coaches. Someone on Facebook recently recalled Community Transit’s blue Orca Run bus that served Tulalip as part of a Route 222 promotion in 2003. Those community-themed bus wraps wore out years ago, but they were fun while they lasted.

Bottom line – we’re hoping transit advertising can make a difference in our bottom line, as it does for other agencies. With these new additions to our fleet on top of existing ad opportunities, our contract with Titan could provide us with an estimated $2.4 million in revenue over the next three years.