Rather than Fast and Furious, taxi passengers will be Fast and hopefully more Curious about the latest goods and services offered in the local area.

Public transportation isn’t just a way to get people from one point to another—it’s also provided opportunities for various companies and organizations to promote their goods and services to a diverse audience. In Japan, it’s very common to see paper as well as digital advertisements on trains, whether hanging from the ceiling or paneled alongside the train car’s wall. Soon advertisers will be able to branch out even further to promote products and businesses via taxi car windows thanks to a new service offered by Japanese taxi-hailing app S.RIDE.

Titled “THE TOKYO MOBILITY GALLERY Canvas” or “Canvas” for short, this new digital signage service jumpstarted by S.RIDE will display advertisements on rear door windows of taxi cars. “Canvas” will be the first of its kind in Japan, and will provide an exciting, novel way for businesses to promote themselves.

The main concept behind Canvas is to “anew Tokyo as a gallery,” and S.RIDE taxis will be specifically outfitted with Glascene. Glascene is a special glass produced by major Japanese glass manufacturer, AGC, which digitally projects realistic-looking images. When not displaying an advertisement, Glascene is transparent to the plain eye, but once an S.RIDE taxi picks up its passenger, the installed Glascene will change to reflect an advertisement. For maximum optimization, the S.RIDE app takes GPS data as well as the timing of a taxi request into consideration when deciding what advertisement to display on the arriving taxi’s rear door windows.

S.RIDE will conduct its first test of this novel service in Tokyo with about 100 taxi cars. After this test, the company plans to steadily increase the number of taxis with Canvas, and has final plans to eventually incorporate Canvas into all operating taxi cars.

Canvas will begin its first rollout from June 2021. Folks who work in advertising and are interested in learning more about S.RIDE’s Canvas service can enroll in an info session here taking place on Wednesday, March 31, from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m both online and offline. Though we’re still far from the advanced, futuristic society envisioned by companies such as Mitsubishi, S.RIDE’s Canvas is just one more step of technological advancement in our digitally transforming society.

Info Session Location
Info Session on Using Canvas as a Medium /「Canvas」媒体説明会概要
Address: Tokyo-to, Minato-ku, Akasaka 4-15-1, Akasaka Garden City 18F, Vector Studio
ベクトルスタジオ(東京都港区赤坂4-15-1 赤坂ガーデンシティ18F)
4 p.m.-5 p.m.
Capped at 200 participants
Website

Source, images: PR Times
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