Everything you need to know about advertising on buses

Manchester Mega Rear Total Jobs

Advertising on the entire back of either a double or single-decker bus is the perfect large-format solution when targeting in-car audiences. The double-decker canvas is more than 6x the size of a Roadside 6 sheet, meaning it can always be seen. The format has a great presence in cities and town centres and is known to be highly memorable.

Mega T-Side London Bus Loaf campaign – global

These provide a much larger creative canvas than the standard T-side, especially in landscape. The format is available at 11 key city centre dominations, offering single advertiser ownership with 100% share of voice.

Bus Rear NHS Oxford Thames Valley

Bus rears offer advertisers coverage with low CPT levels at scale. With a local presence on a national level, this format delivers messaging to areas where no other outdoor formats often exist.

Victoria Beckham Wrapped Routemaster Bus

Iconic Routemaster buses spend 70% of their time in Central London, ensuring high levels of coverage for your campaigns.

Routemasters are a blank canvas for brands and can be wrapped and enhanced with special paint finishes, lenticulars or LED lights – going the extra mile to deliver a standout campaign to a concentrated Central London audience.

Bus Streetliner Newcastle BBC Little Mix The Search campaign

Streetliners are only available on single-decker buses and typically operate in the peripheries of London. They can deliver local messaging on high-frequency regional routes with low CPT entry levels, making Streeliners an ideal format for balanced national coverage, especially where an urban & suburban combination is required.

Bus Superside Topman Bristol

This format is pavement-facing and is positioned high up on the bus for optimum visibility. Supersides provide competitive levels of rare broadcast coverage and are ideal for retail environments. Making 95% pedestrian impacts on high streets across the UK, superside ads deliver prompts to purchase in the right place and at the right time.

Bus T side Kirstall Bridge Leeds

T-Sides are commanding and give brands optimum visibility – always seen above environmental clutter. They offer very high levels of broadcast cover, with a balanced audience split of 45% vehicular VS 55% pedestrian delivery.

Wrapped Bus Homesense Cardiff

Wrapping buses is an unmissable format for both brand and product launches. Ideal for standing out from the crowd, whether driving colour signature, brand fame and encouraging social engagement.

From London to local towns, this arresting format is available to advertisers. In the capital, these iconic canvases spend over 70% of their time driving around iconic central locations. We also have several buses available with a partial sequential message animation on the pavement side. Advertisers can tailor their audience targeting on the move with content that is displayed at specific times or with GEO fencing.

Due to our long history and expertise in outdoor advertising, over 40 UK bus companies have selected Global as their exclusive media owner. These well-known bus companies include Arriva, First Bus, National Express, Stagecoach and Transport for London’s bus network.

These media partnerships allow Global to meet our client’s campaign parameters. Our extensive outdoor portfolio brings brands and audiences together at scale. Clients enjoy the choice of infinite media advertising possibilities that can combine bus with radio, rail, retail and DAX.

Global is an expert in connecting businesses of all sizes to audiences on the move.

The idea that radio, bus, and billboard advertising are exclusively reserved for large corporations is a common misconception. Bus advertising’s coverage and unmissable impact is very popular with all our clients, large and small.

Bus advertising has the strategic advantage of targeting audiences by specific locations. Buses have fixed start and end points, transporting consumers and commuters at scale around their daily environment – often through highly populated areas. Their proximity to community hotspots, such as high streets, schools and offices, allows them to help drive awareness and increase footfall.

Our bus advertising campaigns offer a range of large and small formats, making the cost more affordable and within the budget of the average SME.

We make it our aim to generate maximum exposure from the amount a client wants to spend.

Prices depend on the number of buses on a route, location, and cycle length (typically in weeks). Often, the larger the advert, the more expensive it could be. For example, a full bus wrap could be more costly than a bus rear. Location can also be a factor; advertising in bigger cities might offer more eyeballs but can also come with a higher fee.

Global offers a free consultation service because there are so many price and bus route variations. There is no obligation. The worst that can happen is that you will discover that bus advertising is within or out of your budget. Get in touch to find out more!

Global has been involved in countless successful bus advertising campaigns.

We understand that terms like Routemasters or Streetliners can all seem confusing initially, so we offer a free consultation to discuss your advertising requirements and show you the best options for your campaign.

We also offer an in-house creative service. Our design experts can produce your creative while all the printing and production are done here at Global, which means we’re with you from beginning to end.

Our data and strategy teams can plan your campaign by matching your audience to the areas they frequent most, using bus routes and depots to pinpoint the best locations. Our experienced planning teams combine industry tools, such as route data, with our planning tools to support their recommendations.

You can start by getting in touch with us!

Once you’ve submitted an enquiry, one of our local advertising experts will be in touch to discuss the next steps.

They’ll ask you for some further details, and then you can set up your free consultation if you’d like!