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Written by Melih KorayReviewed by Melih Koray · Last reviewed October 25, 2026 September 14, 2026 Format comparison

Times Square Billboard or Taxi Tops: Which One to Buy

The spectacular is one face over the Bowtie, quoted in tens of thousands per four weeks before production. The digital taxi top is a two-sided roof screen, listed in hundreds, that carries the message through the district and out of it. Both, and the MTA urban panels at the subway entrances, side by side with every figure sourced and dated.

One 15-second spot on a standard Times Square screen is quoted at $25,000 to $50,000 per four weeks (Plug Talk Media, PJX Media); a digital taxi top in New York is listed at $400 to $600 per display per four weeks (Blue Line Media). One holds the Bowtie; the other moves through it. Neither figure is a quote.

That gap, between about 40 and 125 to one on the media line alone, is why the comparison is worth making carefully. The two formats are not substitutes. A spectacular is bought for one intersection at height; a taxi top is bought for the streets that feed it. This page puts them in one table with the third option most plans forget, OUTFRONT Media's urban panels above the subway entrances, and says plainly which is the right buy for which brief. The spectacular figures are the ones examined line by line on the Times Square billboard guide; the taxi figures are the third-party ranges used across this site; nothing here is any operator's rate, in line with the standard every page on this site applies.

Disclosure: the editor is employed by Firefly, one of the companies selling the taxi tops compared here. Every cost on this page comes from a third party, the single link to Firefly carries a sponsored tag, and the Firefly case study cited below is bylined to this site's editor.

Times Square Billboard vs Taxi Tops vs MTA Panels: The Comparison

Three formats, ten criteria. The spectacular column is the digital or static face on a building around the Bowtie. The taxi column is a digital roof screen whose plays are scheduled by neighbourhood, time of day and day of week, so a flight can be weighted to the district; no one routes a yellow cab, the cab follows its fares and the schedule decides what plays when the GPS says it is inside the zone. The panel column is OUTFRONT Media's urban panel above the subway entrances, sold under the MTA concession; Plug Talk Media lists "Premium urban panels at subway entrances" among the street-level media in the district.

The ranges below are market-level figures compiled from publicly published vendor and industry sources. They are not quotes, and they are not the rates of any single network. Always get a written quote before budgeting.

Criterion Times Square spectacular Digital taxi tops, scheduled through Times Square MTA urban panels at the district's subway entrances
Who sells it The fifteen outdoor sellers on the Times Square Alliance's screens page (read 24 October 2026), among them OUTFRONT Media, Clear Channel Outdoor, Silvercast, Branded Cities and New Tradition; out-of-home agencies and marketplaces such as AdQuick buy the same screens Firefly (GPS-enabled full-motion digital tops with time-of-day and day-of-week scheduling, static tops, and 360, 270 and 180-degree wraps, per its on-car page; on a taxi or for-hire vehicle, a wrap needs TLC authorization: 35 RCNY 58-32(c), 59A-29(e)(1)); SOMO; resellers such as Blue Line Media OUTFRONT Media, the MTA's concessionaire for stations, trains and buses; resold through marketplaces and available through DSPs
Unit and flight One face. Digital: a share of the loop, stated as spot length in loop length or as minutes per hour, per four weeks. Static: the face, per four-week cycle Per display (Blue Line's unit), per four weeks; the buy is a number of tops and a schedule of plays weighted to the district Digital Urban Panel: an 8-second spot in a 64-second loop, per panel; the two-sheet lists boroughs, not stations
Published price ranges (third-party only) Plug Talk Media: $25,000 to $40,000 per four weeks for a 15-second share of a standard digital board; $150,000 to $400,000+ for a full board. PJX Media: $50,000 per four weeks for one 15-second spot on a standard screen; $300,000 on the Marriott Marquis; $10,000 to $500,000 by minutes per hour. AdQuick: $10,000 to $22,000 per two weeks on a shared digital slot. The large screen owners print no rate Blue Line Media, New York page: $400 to $600 per digital top per display per four weeks; minimum "$5,000 per ad format or higher". AdQuick, national: $120 to $800 per vehicle per four weeks, New York at the upper end. No rate on the sellers' own pages cited here Plug Talk Media: street-level media in the district, urban panels at subway entrances among them, "From $4,000-$12,000 per 4 weeks". OUTFRONT publishes no panel price
Audience, and how it is counted Times Square Alliance camera counts: 200,000 to 250,000 pedestrians a day, roughly 220,000 on average in 2024, peaks to 330,000. Vendor pages cite up to 360,000 Geopath, which lists taxi panels under transit displays, defines an impression as the number of times people passing a display are likely to notice the ad; AdQuick reports GPS route data and proof-of-play photos. The denominator is 8,494 yellow taxis on the road a day, 8.1 hours each (TLC, July 2026; see the trip-record analysis cited below) MTA ridership: 61,203,303 riders at Times Sq-42 St in 2025, the busiest station in the system; OUTFRONT cites Geopath for its MTA audience
Share of voice A share of one loop on one face: AdQuick describes an 8-to-10-second spot in a 60-to-90-second loop; PJX sells minutes per hour, with a roadblock, 100% of a screen, in blocks of at least an hour. Among the 40-plus displays Clear Channel Outdoor alone counts (approximate, June 2022) One advertiser on the screen per play; a digital top rotates advertisers, but no second screen competes on the same roof. A static top is 100% of that cab for the flight One eighth of the loop on each panel: 8 seconds in 64
Creative flexibility Static: printed once for the cycle. Digital: video to the screen's specification, changed through the seller; 3D anamorphic work is its own budget line (PJX) Full-motion or static creative with HTML dynamic content, scheduled by neighbourhood, time of day and day of week over GPS (Firefly, on-car page); AdQuick says creative on a digital top can be swapped in hours rather than weeks Static creative only, no audio, 1920 by 896 pixels, 8 seconds (OUTFRONT two-sheet, undated, stamped "coming soon")
Production and installation Static: PJX says production can run as high as $20,000 to $30,000 and installation as high as $80,000 to $100,000. Digital: no print; creative to spec Digital top: a file to spec, no print, no install. Static top: a printed panel. Wraps: AdQuick states its wrap pricing includes printing, lamination and installation None. A static file to the panel's resolution
Regulation Zoning Resolution 81-732 requires illuminated signs on the frontages it covers and sets their minimum area and brightness; the Department of Buildings permits them TLC rule 35 RCNY 67-16: a medallion owner who pays the annual advertising permit fee may install a rooftop fixture authorised by the TLC, tested to MIL-STD 810f and approved by its Safety and Emissions Division. Rooftop advertising is not approved on for-hire vehicles other than street-hail liveries (59A-29(e)(2); the street-hail livery exception is 59B-29(e)(2)), so in New York the format runs on yellow medallion taxis and green street-hail liveries, not on Uber or Lyft cars MTA advertising policy; every buy goes through the MTA advertiser request form and carries preemption for emergency messaging (OUTFRONT two-sheet)
Lead time Not published by the screen sellers cited here. PJX advises reaching out as early as possible for New Year's Eve; a static unit adds production and installation before the flight AdQuick's published lead times: 3 to 5 business days for a digital top, 2 to 3 weeks for a static top, 3 to 4 weeks for a full wrap Not published; the MTA advertiser request form precedes the flight
Proof of play Ask for play logs (digital) or posting photographs (static) Proof-of-play photos and GPS route data, per AdQuick's taxi page Ask for the network's play logs

Every figure in the table was read from the publisher's live page on 24 October 2026 and is listed in the sources at the foot of this page. The spectacular rows repeat the Times Square guide; the taxi rows repeat the Blue Line Media and AdQuick pages this site uses for every taxi range; the panel rows come from OUTFRONT's own two-sheet, Plug Talk Media's Times Square page and the MTA's ridership tables. The lead times in the taxi column are AdQuick's published table.

What Does a Times Square Billboard Cost Compared With Taxi Tops?

On the published ranges, the price of one 15-second spot on a standard Times Square screen buys between about 42 and 125 digital taxi tops for the same four weeks. Plug Talk Media puts that spot at $25,000 to $40,000 and PJX Media at $50,000; Blue Line Media's New York page lists a digital top at $400 to $600 per display. Divide one by the other and the arithmetic lands at about 42 tops at the cheap end of the screen and the dear end of the taxi range, and 125 at the other extreme. That is a calculation on three publishers' figures, not a plan, and none of them is a quote.

Two things sit outside that arithmetic. Production: on a static Times Square unit, PJX says production and installation together can reach $100,000 to $130,000 before any media runs, against a digital top that takes a file and prints nothing. And the minimum: Blue Line Media states a minimum of "$5,000 per ad format or higher", which it says may be spread over displays and periods; at its New York range that is the price of roughly 8 to 12 tops for one cycle, so the taxi format has a bottom step too, just a low one.

The honest version of the comparison is not "which is cheaper". It is what the money is for. One spot in a loop on one face, seen by whoever is in the plaza looking up during your seconds, or a fleet of roof screens at eye level, each carrying the message for the hours that cab works, inside the district and then along 42nd Street, Eighth Avenue and wherever the fare goes. The spectacular is a location. The taxi top is a schedule.

How Is the Times Square Audience Counted on a Screen and on a Cab?

Differently, which is why a CPM from one column cannot be compared with a CPM from another until the denominator is named. The spectacular's audience is a camera count: the Times Square Alliance publishes 200,000 to 250,000 pedestrians a day, with 2024 averaging roughly 220,000, and vendor pages cite figures up to 360,000 against the same source, a gap examined on the Times Square guide. The taxi top's audience is a model: Geopath, the out-of-home measurement body, lists taxi panels under transit displays and defines an impression as the number of times people passing a display are likely to notice the ad. The digital top adds what the plaza count cannot: GPS route data with proof-of-play reporting, so the seller can show where the plays happened rather than assert it.

The roofs themselves are counted by the city. The TLC's monthly indicators put 8,494 yellow taxis on the road on an average day in July 2026, each working 8.1 hours, on 113,811 trips a day, and the TLC zone that covers the district, Times Sq/Theatre District, starts 3,121 of the 107,636 yellow-cab trips a day in the August 2026 trip records, according to a TLC trip-record analysis. Any impression figure a taxi seller gives should be built on those numbers, on which of the cabs carry the screen, and on how many of their hours the schedule weights to Times Square. A round figure with no method is a claim.

The only quantified study we found from a seller in the taxi column is Firefly's brand-lift study measured by LoopMe on a cosmetics campaign across Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and Miami: a 43% increase in brand lift, which the study describes as heightened awareness, 44% in recall, 46% in favourability and 85% in purchase intent (Firefly case study on fireflyon.com, read 24 October 2026). It is the operator's study of the operator's campaign, published under this site's editor's byline, and it is more than any Times Square screen owner publishes. Ask every seller in all three columns for the equivalent on a campaign like yours.

Under the street the count is a turnstile. Times Sq-42 St carried 61,203,303 riders in 2025, the busiest station in the subway (MTA), and OUTFRONT Media's urban panels sit above subway entrances like the ones those riders use. A ride is a journey, not a person, and the panel is one eighth of a loop; but the number is counted, published and public, which is more than can be said for most vendor decks.

When Is Each the Right Buy?

Three briefs, three different answers. None of them is "all three", yet.

The launch that needs the photograph

A product reveal, an IPO morning, a film opening, a founder who wants the frame. Buy the spectacular. No taxi top and no subway panel produces the image of your brand over the Bowtie, and the press and the social clip are the return. Name the unit by ID, buy enough share of voice for the hour the photograph is taken, and budget the anamorphic creative as its own line, as PJX advises. If the flight is one day, a roadblock hour is the product; if it is four weeks, know that the AdQuick shared-slot tier at $10,000 to $22,000 per two weeks buys a rotation, not a takeover.

Four weeks of frequency against Midtown, under the spectacular's floor

A budget that would buy one standard spot on one screen, or nothing, in Times Square. Buy digital taxi tops and weight the schedule to the district. The fleet passes the same crowd at street level, and it keeps going: the tourist who walked through the plaza at noon is on Seventh Avenue at four and outside a hotel on Eighth at nine, and the screen is there each time. The measure to ask for is plays inside the zone, per day and per top, backed by GPS route data, against the flight. If the seller cannot report that, the "through Times Square" claim is decoration.

Commuters at the entrances, bought programmatically

A campaign already running on a DSP that wants a Times Square line without a Times Square negotiation. Buy the Digital Urban Panels. OUTFRONT's two-sheet, still stamped "coming soon", lists them as available through omnichannel and point-solution DSPs, an 8-second static spot in a 64-second loop, running 24 hours, after the MTA advertiser request form. The station audience is the MTA's count, 61,203,303 riders a year at Times Sq-42 St; ask which entrances the panels in the buy face. The limit is the creative: static only, no motion, one eighth of the loop.

The Combination Most Buyers Miss

The plans that work in Times Square tend to be two-part, and the two parts do different jobs. The spectacular buys the photograph: one face, one week or one hour, enough share of voice to be seen at the moment that matters, and a creative built for the clip. The taxi tops buy the frequency: the same crowd at eye level for the other 27 days, on the streets that feed the plaza and drain it, with GPS route data to show where the plays happened. The MTA panels, if the plan is programmatic, add the entrances. Bought together the three are counted three ways, camera, model and turnstile, so the reconciliation is the planner's job, not the vendors'; bought apart, each is sold as if the other two did not exist. No third-party figure on this page says how the parts should be weighted, and no seller of any one column is a neutral guide to the other two.

Times Square on a Budget Under the Spectacular's Floor

When the budget will not buy a spectacular, the decision is between the two street-level columns, not between a small screen buy and nothing. The lowest published multi-week media entries on a Times Square face are AdQuick's shared digital slot, $10,000 to $22,000 per two weeks with no stated spot length, and PJX's minutes-per-hour buys from $10,000 per four weeks; for a single day, Plug Talk Media lists share-of-time buys on mid-tier boards from $1,500. The $40 pay-per-play and $150 one-day photo products are a photograph rather than a schedule; what they include is set out on the Times Square billboard guide. PJX Media, an out-of-home agency that works with the vendors selling Times Square inventory, advises that advertisers "should consider OOH inventory adjacent to Times Square if they want to weigh their options". The taxi tops and the subway-entrance panels in the table are that adjacent inventory, and the right one depends on the brief: tops if the plan needs motion, frequency and GPS route data, panels if it already runs on a DSP and static creative will do.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are Times Square ads worth it?

For a launch that needs the photograph and the press moment, a spectacular does something no other New York format does. For four weeks of frequency against the same 200,000 to 250,000 daily pedestrians (Times Square Alliance), PJX Media, an agency that buys the screens, advises weighing inventory adjacent to Times Square. Nobody publishes a return figure for either.

Should a product launch buy the spectacular or the taxi tops?

If the launch depends on one image of the brand over the Bowtie, for press, social or a sales deck, buy the spectacular, sized to the hour that matters. If it depends on being seen repeatedly by the people in Midtown that week, taxi tops weighted to the district do that job for a fraction of the media cost. Many launches buy one hour of the first and four weeks of the second.

Can a taxi-top flight be kept inside Times Square?

The cab cannot; the schedule can. Nobody routes a yellow taxi, so a digital top follows its fares. What a seller can do is play your creative only when the top's GPS places it inside the district. Ask for the zone, the plays inside it per day and per top, the GPS route data behind them, and the hours the schedule runs.

How do you compare a Times Square CPM with a taxi-top CPM?

Only after naming both denominators. The screen's audience is the Alliance camera count, 200,000 to 250,000 pedestrians a day, while vendor pages cite up to 360,000. A taxi top's impressions come from a Geopath-style model built on how many cabs carry the screen and how many hours they spend in the zone. Two CPMs on different counts are two different numbers.

What are the alternatives to a Times Square billboard?

Three reach the same crowd without a spectacular: digital taxi tops scheduled through the district, sold by Firefly, SOMO and resellers; OUTFRONT Media's MTA urban panels above subway entrances; and the screens on the streets around the Bowtie that PJX Media calls adjacent inventory. Each is counted a different way.

How do you reach the Times Square audience without a billboard?

On the street and under it. A digital taxi top scheduled by neighbourhood plays inside the district on cabs among the 8,494 yellow taxis on the road each day (TLC monthly indicators, July 2026), with GPS route data behind the plays. Below, 61,203,303 riders used Times Sq-42 St in 2025, and the panels at its entrances are sold by OUTFRONT Media.

The Bottom Line

A Times Square billboard and a digital taxi top are priced two orders of magnitude apart because they are two different purchases: a location with a camera-counted crowd, and a schedule with GPS route data. Buy the spectacular when the brief is the photograph. Buy the tops when the brief is four weeks of the same audience at eye level for a budget under the spectacular's entry price. Buy the panels when the plan is already on a DSP. And whichever column you sign, the published range on this page is the order of magnitude, not the number; the number is on a written quote with the unit, the cab count or the panel group named on it. Where the taxi format sits against the other New York formats, and who regulates each, is on the city-wide format guide; the subway side is on the subway advertising guide.

Brief received.

It is in the queue and will be read by a person. Expect a reply with questions rather than a quote.

Describe the New York campaign

Market, timing and the format decision still open. A person reads every brief and replies with questions, not a rate card.

Four lines make a brief

  1. Where. The two plans side by side, with the same dates and the same budget band.
  2. When. The day the creative has to be live, and the day it comes down.
  3. How much. A band is enough; nobody here needs the final number.
  4. Judged on. Reach, footfall, search lift or sales: the number your boss will ask for.

The reply names the units that fit and the published ranges behind them, with the source for each. This desk prints no rates of its own.

Send the brief

Sources

  1. Plug Talk Media, Times Square Billboard Cost & Rental (15-second and full-board ranges; street-level media including "Premium urban panels at subway entrances") · plugtalk.media · read 24 October 2026
  2. PJX Media, Cost of Billboard Advertising in Times Square ($50,000 standard spot, $300,000 Marriott Marquis, minutes per hour, roadblock, production and installation, New Year's Eve, adjacent inventory) · pjxmedia.com · read 24 October 2026
  3. AdQuick, How Much Does a Billboard Cost? 2026 Pricing Guide (Times Square rows, shared-slot tier, loop description) · adquick.com/billboard-cost · read 24 October 2026
  4. AdQuick, Taxi Advertising: Tops, Wraps, Taxi TV & Pricing (national ranges per vehicle per four weeks, New York at the upper end, lead-time table, wrap production included, measurement partners including Geopath, proof-of-play photos and GPS route data) · adquick.com/taxi-advertising · read 24 October 2026
  5. AdQuick, Subway Advertising (New York rows: car card, station poster, digital screen, station domination) · adquick.com/subway-advertising · read 24 October 2026
  6. Blue Line Media, NYC Taxi Ads (New York static and digital top ranges, "$5,000 per ad format or higher" minimum, rideshare not permitted in New York City) · bluelinemedia.com · read 24 October 2026
  7. Times Square Alliance, Market Research & Data (pedestrian counts, camera methodology) · timessquarenyc.org · read 24 October 2026
  8. Times Square Alliance, Digital Screens & Billboards (seller list) · timessquarenyc.org · read 24 October 2026
  9. Clear Channel Outdoor, Times Square Billboards (40-plus displays, 17 digital) · clearchanneloutdoor.com · read 24 October 2026
  10. New York City Zoning Resolution, Section 81-732, Special Times Square signage requirements · zr.planning.nyc.gov · read 24 October 2026
  11. NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission, 35 RCNY Chapter 67, Rules for Taxicab Hack-up and Maintenance (67-16, Authorized Rooftop Advertising Fixture; rulebook updated 24 October 2025) · nyc.gov, PDF · read 24 October 2026
  12. NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission, 35 RCNY Chapter 59, For-Hire Vehicle rules (59A-29(e)(2), no rooftop advertising on for-hire vehicles) · nyc.gov, PDF · read 24 October 2026
  13. NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission, monthly indicators and August 2026 trip records (8,494 yellow vehicles per day, 8.1 hours per vehicle and 113,811 trips per day in July 2026; Times Sq/Theatre District 3,121 of 107,636 pickups a day in August 2026), as compiled in the TLC trip-record analysis linked in the text · nyc.gov, aggregated reports · read 24 October 2026
  14. Geopath, Glossary (impressions, transit displays including taxi panels, circulation) · geopath.org/glossary · read 24 October 2026
  15. MTA, Subway and bus ridership for 2025 (Times Sq-42 St, 61,203,303 riders) · mta.info · read 24 October 2026
  16. MTA, Advertising and activations (OUTFRONT for stations, trains and buses) · mta.info · read 24 October 2026
  17. OUTFRONT Media, NYC Digital Urban Panels and Video Urban Panels two-sheet (undated, stamped "coming soon"; 448 screens, 1920 by 896, static only, 8 seconds in 64, DSP availability, MTA advertiser request form) · PDF; transit audience sourcing from outfront.com/mta · read 24 October 2026
  18. Firefly, On-Car Advertising (digital tops, static tops, wraps, scheduling) · fireflyon.com/on-car-advertising · read 24 October 2026
  19. Firefly, Case Study: Boosting Key Brand Metrics with Firefly Digital Taxi/Rideshare Tops (LoopMe-measured brand lift; Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Miami; bylined to Melih Koray, this site's editor) · fireflyon.com · read 24 October 2026
  20. SOMO (digital taxi tops on yellow taxis) · somo.world · read 24 October 2026
  21. Blindspot, How to Effortlessly Get on a Times Square Billboard for Just $40 (pay-per-play from about $40; page updated 29 July 2026) · seeblindspot.com · read 24 October 2026
  22. Welcome to Times Square, Your Picture on a Billboard in Times Square (from $150) · timessquarebillboard.com · read 24 October 2026

Corrected 24 October 2026. The $50,000 quote is PJX Media's figure for a standard non-prime screen, not for One Times Square; the claim that a GPS position is logged for every play became GPS route data with proof-of-play reporting, the wording sellers publish; PJX's production and installation figures keep its "as high as"; the case study's 43% is brand lift, not awareness; Clear Channel's 40-plus count is dated June 2022; and the case study's author, this site's editor, is disclosed.

Corrected 25 October 2026. Blue Line Media's $400 to $600 is a New York taxi-top price, not one for tops scheduled through the district; the Alliance lists its sellers alphabetically, so none "leads"; the 360,000 figure comes from a vendor web page, not a deck; the $150 product is a one-day photo, not pay-per-play; PJX is described as its own site describes it; and the case study's impression count was removed.