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A Look at the MTA's New Video Ads Inside Subway Cars
By
John Del Signore
Published Sep 21, 2010
Modified Sep 21, 2010
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By
John Del Signore
Published Sep 21, 2010
Modified Sep 21, 2010
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Your $2.25 subway fare now comes with an added bonus: baseball highlights to help take your mind off of your neighbor's fingernail clipping. Today the MTA rolled out the first ever video commercial inside the Times Square shuttle. Forget reading a book or playing BrickBreaker; now you can watch replays of the previous night’s "exciting post-season action," brought to you by TBS and Major League Baseball!
The video ads, which don't have any sound, are part of the MTA's push for more "novel forms of advertising." Digital display ads are already on some of the MTA's buses, and officials are also pushing for "station domination campaigns," in which advertisers are invited to take over entire stations and digital displays on trains, buses and stations. According to a press release, the MTA is also exploring 3D images and in-tunnel advertising!
And on 50 of the Long Island Rail Road’s 836 M-7 train cars, the MTA is selling exterior ad space, a first for commuter trains. The ads begin at the level of the doors’ floors and extend up to the bottom of the cars’ windows. In Times Square, the shuttle will also be completely wrapped in ads for TBS and MLB. The ads prominently feature pitcher Cliff Lee, which is fitting because he's the ace who took the subway to Yankee Stadium for Game 1 of the World Series last year because traffic from Manhattan to the Bronx was terrible—and he still won.
Here's a video demo:
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cliff lee
commercials
MTA
subway ads
video
John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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