Taxi & OOH advertising glossary
Every term you’ll meet in a taxi or out-of-home media plan, in plain English — so you can read any quote or proposal without a decoder ring. The one to remember: an impression is not a memory, so the number that matters is cost-per-memory, not CPM.
- OOH (Out-of-Home)
- Any advertising seen outside the home — billboards, transit, taxi and car ads, posters, screens.
- DOOH (Digital OOH)
- The digital subset of OOH: screens you can change remotely and buy programmatically, including digital taxi tops. All DOOH is OOH; not all OOH is DOOH.
- CPM
- Cost per thousand impressions. The standard OOH pricing unit. Taxi wraps run roughly a $2.50–$10 CPM; digital tops and premium markets run higher.
- Impression
- One opportunity for a person to see the ad. Not the same as attention or memory — it’s the top of the funnel.
- Cost-per-memory
- A recall-adjusted way to compare media: CPM divided by the share of impressions that become genuine brand recall. The honest metric for OOH, because only a small share of impressions are remembered.
- Reach
- The number of unique people exposed to the ad.
- Frequency
- How many times, on average, each person is exposed. Buses buy high frequency on a route; roaming taxis spread reach wider.
- Recall
- Whether someone actually remembers the brand after exposure. The real goal of awareness media, and what strong creative maximises.
- Wrap
- Branded vinyl covering a vehicle body — full, partial or “lite.” The cheapest, boldest, always-on moving-OOH format.
- Cartop / taxi top
- An ad unit on a vehicle roof. Static (printed, often backlit) or digital LED (dynamic, dayparted, geo-targeted). On a licensed cab it’s a “taxi top.”
- Taxi TV
- The interior seat-back screen in a cab — a captive, long-dwell, narrow-but-deep audience.
- Dayparting
- Scheduling different creative by time of day on digital screens — a breakfast ad at 8am, a dinner ad at 6pm.
- Geo-targeting
- Serving ads only in chosen locations (zips, corridors, near your stores) — a core advantage of digital cartops.
- Programmatic
- Automated, auction-based buying of (digital) ad inventory in real time, via a platform rather than a direct order.
- SSP (Supply-Side Platform)
- The tech a media owner uses to make inventory available programmatically. Vistar Media is a leading DOOH SSP.
- DSP (Demand-Side Platform)
- The tech an advertiser/agency uses to buy inventory programmatically. Adomni offers a self-serve DOOH DSP (NeonX).
- PMP (Private Marketplace)
- An invite-only programmatic deal between a buyer and specific sellers, with negotiated terms — common for premium DOOH.
- Attribution
- Tying an ad exposure to an outcome — a store visit, a site visit, a conversion — usually via mobile-location data.
- Retargeting
- Re-serving a mobile/online ad to people who were physically exposed to an OOH placement. Top wrap/DOOH networks offer it.
- Geopath
- The US industry body providing standardised, modeled OOH impression measurement.
- Flight
- The scheduled run of a campaign — e.g. a four-week flight.
- BLITZ / swarm
- A concentrated deployment of many wrapped vehicles around an event or area for short, high-impact saturation.
- Moving OOH
- OOH on vehicles that travel (taxis, rideshare, buses, trucks) — as opposed to fixed billboards. Sometimes called “transit” or “mobile” OOH.
- Medallion / TLC
- In NYC, a medallion is a taxi operating licence; the Taxi & Limousine Commission (TLC) regulates cab advertising, including permits and the interior-advertising licence.
- Full-motion vs static
- Whether a screen shows video/animation (full-motion) or a fixed image (static). Digital cartops are typically static or slow-rotating for road safety.
Use it: cost guide · compare companies · OOH vs DOOH · how to buy
Independent, unpaid reference by an out-of-home-experienced editorial team. Updated 2026-08-07.