How much does taxi advertising cost in London?

London taxi advertising is priced per campaign, not per taxi. What you pay is set by five things: the format you choose, how many vehicles carry it, how long it runs, how tightly you target it, and production. Change any one of them and the number moves.

We will give you starting prices below, because refusing to put any number on a page is its own kind of evasion. But a price on its own cannot tell you what you are actually buying, for the reason set out further down this page, so it is worth understanding the levers before you compare quotes from anyone, including us.

Starting prices

Three figures to anchor the rest of this page:

Those are starting prices. What you actually pay moves with how many vehicles you take and how long you run them, so both multiply. The minimums matter as much as the prices, and we explain why they differ below.

Short promotional campaigns for events are handled separately and are not bound by those minimums: see below.

We tell you further down to ask any supplier whether their number is media-only or includes production. It would be poor form not to answer that for ourselves: ours is media-only. Treat a quote that bundles everything into one figure without saying so as a quote you do not yet understand.

The five things that set your price

1. Format

Surface area and installation complexity are the biggest single input. A full taxi wrap covers the whole vehicle and takes the longest to print and fit. A superside covers the door panels and turns around faster. Tip-seat posters sit inside the passenger cabin and are the lightest-touch format. In-cab screens are priced differently again, because you are buying playtime rather than a physical surface.

Most campaigns mix formats: a wrap or superside for street presence, tip-seats for the captive audience inside. Each is quoted and tracked separately, and all of them land in the same delivery report.

2. Number of vehicles

More cabs costs more, but more cabs is not automatically a better campaign. A small number concentrated in the areas you actually care about will usually outperform a larger number spread thinly across Greater London.

3. Duration

Out-of-home works on frequency: the same person passing the same vehicle repeatedly on a familiar route. Very short bursts tend to buy awareness you cannot measure.

Each format also carries a minimum booking, and they are different for a practical reason:

• Supersides: one month minimum. Panels go on and come off comparatively quickly.
• Full wraps: three months minimum. A wrap takes considerably more work to apply, keeps the vehicle off the road for longer at both ends, and removing one properly involves paint correction afterwards. None of that effort scales down with a shorter booking: a two-week wrap costs almost exactly as much to deliver as a three-month one. The minimum is what makes the format viable, not an upsell.

Those minimums are part of every budget above: a full-wrap campaign always runs for at least three months, which is why its range is quoted for three months.

4. How tightly you target it

A campaign that needs to concentrate in the West End and the City is competing for the most contested hours in the fleet’s week, so it shapes how many cabs and how long a realistic campaign needs. There is no surcharge per area: tight targeting changes the size of the campaign, not the price of a mile.

We split London into six zones, central to outer, and your report shows the time delivered in each. That is how your delivery gets proved.

5. Production and approval

Production is a real cost on top of media and it scales with format: printing and fitting a full wrap is a different job from a run of tip-seat posters. Ask any supplier whether their quote is media-only or includes print and installation: the two are often presented as though they were the same number.

Transport for London has to approve taxi advertising before it goes on the road. We manage that process: you supply artwork to our template, we get it cleared and confirm the spec, and we flag anything that will not pass before it goes to print.

One fixed price

Every campaign is quoted as a single fixed price. One number for the whole campaign, agreed up front, delivery reporting included. Easy to put in a budget, and it does not move.

And if it under-delivers, we make it good. The quote commits to the on-street hours the campaign will deliver. If the GPS report shows a shortfall, we keep the campaign running at no extra cost until it is delivered; if we can’t, the shortfall comes off the invoice, pro rata.

Booking on behalf of a client? Agencies buy from a trade rate card per format instead: predictable and resellable, still fully GPS-verified.

Why the rate alone does not tell you what you are buying

We have put budgets at the top of this page, so here is the caveat that belongs with them, and it applies to every taxi advertising rate card you will be shown, not only ours.

A price per vehicle treats every cab as interchangeable. They are not. What a vehicle is worth to you depends on where it spends its working hours, and that time is never spread evenly.

The illustrative delivery report on our homepage shows the shape of it. Across a sample twelve-vehicle, four-week campaign, Westminster accounts for 14% of on-street time, the City of London 11% and Camden 10%, while a number of outer boroughs register none at all. That is one sample campaign rather than a fleet average, but the distribution is the point: two campaigns bought at an identical price per taxi can deliver very different value.

The conventional way OOH is sold gives you no way to tell which one you bought. Reach is estimated from industry averages rather than from your vehicles, and nobody can show you where they actually went.

One distinction to carry into any OOH proposal, including ours: location and hours are measured; audience figures are modelled. A supplier presenting modelled impressions as though they had been counted is telling you something useful about their reporting. We set out where that line falls, and how to check it, in what GPS-verified advertising actually means.

What a realistic first campaign looks like

The budgets above tell you the scale. What they cannot tell you is what to actually book, so here is the shape of a sensible first campaign.

• One format, done properly, rather than a thin spread across three. Supersides and tip-seats are the usual entry points; a full wrap is the biggest statement and the biggest production cost.
• Specific about area. “Central London” is not a brief. Naming the boroughs or zones that matter lets us tell you honestly whether your budget can concentrate there.
• At least the minimum, and usually more. One month on a superside is the floor, not the recommendation: frequency is built by the same commuters passing the same vehicle week after week, so give it long enough to be seen more than once.

What to ask before you sign anything

Five questions that reveal quickly how a taxi advertising supplier actually operates:

1. Is this price fixed, or can it change once the campaign is running?
2. Does it include production and TfL approval, or are those quoted separately?
3. What exactly is measured, and what is modelled?
4. Can you show me where my specific vehicles ran, by zone and borough, after the campaign?
5. How is the final invoice calculated, and what happens if delivery falls short?

If the answers to three and four are vague, the reach figure at the top of the proposal is an estimate dressed as a fact.

Getting a real number

Tell us the budget, the timing and the areas that matter, and we will come back with an actual fixed price, plus the delivery reporting that backs it up. No automated pricing, and no obligation; it starts as a conversation. If it is quicker to talk it through, the number is 020 4577 0102 and a real person answers.

More detail on the two buying models and the six zones is on how pricing works.