Out of Home ad firm Exterion Media has equipped 500 London buses with beacon technology. Beacons play a key role in the company’s Urban Activation strategy to connect consumers with brands while on the move. Exterion is now working with a number of brands to deliver information and entertainment to more than 300,000 London bus passengers each day.

The solution, developed in collaboration with Proxama, uses Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacon technology to send targeted in-app messages to London commuters’ mobile devices. Its not clear which apps are involved in the deployment or whether the bus passenger needs a dedicated app in order to receive the messages. We have asked the question of Exterion but no response as yet.

Proxama was previously involved in a successful six-month beacon trial on 110 buses in Norwich, which saw 30 per cent of users clicking through from receipt of notifications, and 2,000 app downloads.

Exterion’s online urban community, work.shop.play, recently found London to have the highest penetration of smartphones (94 per cent) in the UK. Coupled with this, the average journey on a bus in London is estimated to be between 17 and 19 minutes, with some journeys taking considerably longer. This provides passengers with the time and opportunity to respond, interact, view or redeem offers delivered to their mobile phones.

“This solution will engage audiences on the move in a way that builds meaningful and mutually beneficial relationships,” said Exterion Media UK managing director, Jason Cotterrell.We believe the future of OOH engagement is the ability to deliver a truly personal experience, and, with so many of us keeping our smartphones handy during the bus trips we take every day, it makes sense to combine the two. Our ultimate aim is to deploy this technology across our portfolio nationwide, with a long-term vision of providing full connectivity across buses in the UK.”