School Bus Advertising - Will it Produce Revenue?

School bus advertising has become a hot topic these days. As more and more school districts face shrinking budgets as a result of smaller tax revenues, they are looking towards different revenue generators.

And one popular one is school bus advertising.

School bus ads are ads placed on the outside and inside of yellow school buses. On the inside of buses, they are placed along the tops of windows or on the ceiling On the outside of buses, they are posted along the side or the back. Sometimes the whole bus is wrapped.

School districts have looked at counties and cities operating bus fleets and producing revenues have grown jealous. But will they make the same money that counties and cities do? With the exception of the largest school districts, most school districts probably won't make as much as they expect.

That's because school bus advertising will take a long time to be a universal ad product that can be utilized across the country. Advertisers like universal ad media - that they can design and produce quickly and distribute across many ad formats. Think 30 second TV and radio spots. Or billboards. Or king size bus posters, which are 144" wide by 30" high almost across 200 cities.

Until school districts across the United States embrace bus ads - and use universal sizes - all but the largest school districts will not produce large revenue figures.