We mentioned about taxi ads being an outdated and ineffective advertising channel, while lift ads are much more effective, if equally annoying.
In China, lift ads in big cities have already been dominated by Focus Media, a listed company founded by Jiang Nanchun.
However, Xinchao Media Group, a relatively new player into the lifts, has been causing some serious trouble to Focus Media. Xinchao’s recent CNY2.1 billion (US$300m) investment from Baidu caused Focus Media’s share prices to further slide.
Xinchao’s three co-founders come from media and internet backgrounds, and is backed by a slew of tech billionaires.
So when you think about a lift in a commercial/residential building in China, there is one, no, two, interactive ad panels from Focus Media and one from Xinchao. Pretty full (and honestly quite annoying) right?
That’s not the end of it. A company called TikinMedia turns the lift doors into interactive spaces.
You might say, wait a minute, lift doors open and close all the time, isn’t that impossible to put an ad panel on it?
Well, when there is an empty space, there is a way. Tikin uses projection – whenever the lift doors are closed, the projection is activated.
So the whole lift now looks like this (when you are inside):
Now you do not have anywhere to hide.
Fortunately, many lifts in major cities in China are covered with 4G. So you can enjoy Tik Tok on your mobile instead of watching the ads.