The Beer Store in Ontario has begun selling ad space on its 350-strong delivery truck fleet.
While the cabs on the mostly black trucks will retain Beer Store branding, the trailers will sport full wraps of advertising for other marketers. The decision comes after The Beer Store signed a deal with Toronto-based Revision Marketing, which is offering a new measurement system for the medium.
Truck advertising has been around a long time but the challenge was tracking it precisely, said Ron Gibson, president of Revision Marketing. The new system, developed by Market Information Services of Canada Inc., uses GPS units on each truck to track the location of each rig at exact times, then matches that data to government supplied traffic counts to come up with what is effectively a circulation number, he said.
A CPM-based rate card has been developed based on test drives and Gibson is currently meeting with advertising and media agencies. He hopes to have the first wrapped trucks on the road in the next couple of months.
Right now there are no plans for beer brands to advertise on the trucks, said Gibson. The Beer Store is owned by the brewers themselves and they are looking at this as a new source of revenue, not as another way to advertise. Gibson said they’ll also avoid children-targeted brands and liquor advertisers, but he expects there to be a great deal of interest from other marketers who will see merit in an association with The Beer Store, such as casinos and fast-food brands.
The Beer Store has been looking to increase revenues through ad sales for some time, said Ted Moroz, vice-president of logistics at The Beer Store, in a release. But they were reluctant to put the truck space up for sale because of the lack of metrics. The new measurement system puts those concerns to rest, he added.
