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November 4, 2005
Targeted Taxi Advertising
Sitting in a Taxi on the Elevated Highway of Shanghai yesterday afternoon and looking at the LCD screen in the headrest in front of me blasting Chinese advertisements got me thinking...
"Imagine if these ads could be targeted to just Foreigners (laowais), it would be the perfect tool to promote a product or service to the 1/2 million or so Foreigners living here, perfectly targeted and no waste of inventory if your product/service was generic such as a restaurant or legal service etc etc"
Over the next 15 minutes I got very excited about this as I have been thinking about a project for the foreigners in Shanghai, and this would be the PERFECT way to market the product, make my millions and go retire, and as I was keen to get moving on this ASAP I decided to call Aidan Sullivan, CEO of i-level Media Group www.i-levelmedia.com a company who are leaders in this kind of digital media advertising...
Me = Aidan, I have this idea and wanted to run it past you, can I target ads in the taxis you control to Foreigners, non chinese aka white people (no racism intended)
Aidan = You want to target ads to JUST foreigners ?
Me = Yes, simple, when a foreigner gets in the Taxi the driver just flicks a switch and the ad is targeted at the Western/Foreign person.
Aidan = Feasible, yes but highly unlikely that you could persuade the taxi drivers to do so in China or elsewhere.
Me = Oh ok, not as easy as I thought then, so what ya reckon, we a few
months/years away from this ?
Aidan = Interactivity will be the first step whereby the ADU (Advertising Display Unit) can recognize inputs from the passenger by means of input prompts and then analyzing the findings to generate advertising/content based on those findings. This will allow targeting down to a group level. Interactivity is possible now by means of touch screen technology and other user interfaces however it is yet to be economically viable in China yet but we are only a few years away.
At the end of the day it will all be determined by simple economics ie when the revenue can cover the cost associated with the addition of the added functions.
So with this in mind I phone another contact of mine in Beijing and run the idea past him, and his answer (in bold for impact and level of decibels through my cellphone"
"In a country of 1.3 billion customers, why are you even thinking about limiting your whole business model to just 500,000 ( 0.0005% ) of the population?"
I am sure there is a lesson in the above, but as I am sure you can imagine Living in China and thinking like you are back in UK and USA just dont work. I am not sure where I am going with this post, but thought I'd share it anyhow
Posted by shak at November 4, 2005 12:07 PM