For several years now the bus industry has been trying to find the best way to monetise on-board passenger wi-fi. LetsJoin reckons it’s cracked it – and made the passenger’s experience better too
Passenger wi-fi is a fantastic tool for bus operators. It can attract new passengers, it can reward your existing customers for their loyalty, and it can keep bored youths sufficiently occupied so that they’re not vandalising your vehicle.
However, it’s not without its pitfalls. As buses move between buildings in cities and towns, the signal can drop out, meaning it’s not always a great experience for the customer.
And, the more people onboard the bus using the wi-fi, the slower the wi-fi will be.
Sam Glover, a technologist and the founder of LetsJoin, was using public transport and finding this problem. He looked into it, wondering if he could improve the hardware used to make it better, but found that the equipment installed on buses is already really good. “If there was no interference, it'd work perfectly,” he says.
The challenges most operators face with onboard wi-fi are threefold: Service is slow and intermittent, so the passenger experience can be quite poor; it can be costly to run, because passengers consume much richer media online than before; and wi-fi is not used to best effect by operators to try and understand customers.
Operators usually go to LetsJoin when they've experienced the first two problems, says Sam.
‘From PC to Mac’
LetsJoin is an infotainment provider, the largest of its kind in the world, providing catch-up TV, boxsets, movies and news media to passenger transport services. It also generates its own news content.
Its method for improving the onboard wi-fi experience is easy enough to understand: Put a server on each bus that uses the wi-fi hardware but doesn't rely on an internet connection, but which holds enough content to keep the average media-hungry customer happy.
A portal in the operator's branding opens when the passenger connects to the wi-fi; it shows all that content, and gives them the option for them to browse the internet as normal – but the lure of LetsJoin's content ensures that fewer people are actually using it at any one time.
It means the wi-fi is faster and less intermittent, and operators' data costs reduce.
“Everything we do is about making it work really really well, so the passenger sees a huge improvement,” says Sam.
“We're trying to convert it from a PC-like experience to a Mac-like experience.”
Monetisation
That's not the cleverest part, though. LetsJoin has addressed the third challenge mentioned earlier: Using wi-fi to better understand customers, and its monetisation.
LetsJoin's system uses its own innovative patent-pending Analytics Behaviour Insights engine (ABI), which is able to detect users' demographics without doing any questionnaires. It's fully-compliant with data protection laws, but it can work out the age, gender and interests of people logged on – and then do three things with it: Provide it to the operator for use in marketing; use it to tailor the content on the portal; and use it to target advertising.
To demonstrate, Sam opens the portal and the first advert shown is for a local gym – it's showing, Sam says, because he'd been searching online for a gym to join earlier that day.
What's more, it's not just an advert; it's offering a discount for joining that gym.
A big part of LetsJoin's work is to get advertisers on board, and not just companies local to the bus operator. It's targeting large chains and national media buying agencies to join its On-board Digital Advertising Network (ODAN) nationwide, so they can target passengers in cities across the UK.
And, it's not just about having an advert: It is encouraging these chains to offer discounts and vouchers to bus passengers. That way, LetsJoin can measure its effectiveness precisely; operators are able to offer exclusive discounts at high street stores and restaurants to their customers; and the customer’s experience is improved.
National budgets
ODAN guarantees operators revenue from their wi-fi – revenue from big companies, which means higher revenue than local advertisers. Advertising agencies join the nationwide network, and operators’ wi-fi media is auctioned to the highest bidder.
“Local bus operators can’t attract the national advertisers alone,” says Sam. “We sit in the middle, and give bus companies access to national advertising budgets.”
LetsJoin’s first bus operator client was Lothian Bus, which started using the service in late 2015. The platform is installed on almost all of Lothian’s vehicles, and Lothian benefits from demographic information about its customers, as well as the advertising revenue.
Advertisers love it, too. A busload of 50-80 passengers, a captive audience for an average of 25 minutes, is a great audience to market to – and LetsJoin’s media buying agency clients are crying out for more bus operators to be involved.
Advertisers want you!
That’s why LetsJoin is offering free wi-fi evaluations to bus operators. It partners with all the major on-board wi-fi suppliers, including Icomera, Mobile Onboard and Faltcom – so if you don’t already have wi-fi, LetsJoin can help. And, based on the evaluation, LetsJoin may be willing to part-fund the wi-fi installation.
“It’s about improving the passenger experience – but it’s also about results for operators and advertisers,” says Sam.
“The industry has been talking about monetising wi-fi for about four or five years, and really we’re the only ones who have demonstrated to media buying agencies on any scale that we can actually deliver that advertising performance to the advertiser.
“We want to roll this platform out with bus operators across the UK, because of the demand from media buyers. They’re saying to us ‘You’ve proven what you can do – now we want to be able to advertise across the UK’.”
Contact LetsJoin
Visit about.letsjoin.com
Call Sam Glover on 0207 193 2569
Or email sam.glover@letsjoin.com
