• by June 22, 2005

By Daisy Whitney

Wherever there's empty space, there's room for a marketing message. How else to explain ads in elevators, public restrooms, and now taxi cabs?

Interactive Taxi, a wholly owned subsidiary of Targeted Media Partners, has introduced interactive touch screens that provide news, weather reports, listings for local restaurants and bars, and advertising to about 250 taxis in Boston, 350 in Chicago, and 200 in San Francisco. The service is like an information kiosk in the back of the cab.

Advertisers include Verizon, NBC, CBS, Discovery Channel, Bristol Meyers, Norfolk Bank, and American Express.

The loop runs about 13 minutes, which is the time of the average cab ride in the cities where Interactive Taxi is running, Gottlieb says. "It's 13 uninterrupted minutes where they can't change the channel and get up and get some water," he says. And it appears to be working. Riders spend an average of 12 minutes using the service during the ride, even though they can turn it off anytime.

But they're not.

Over 90 percent of users the company surveyed say that they'd like to see the screens in more cabs - welcome evidence that most consumers don't yet suffer from information overload.