The Scoop <\/p>\n
The share of ads on New York City subways and buses from tech companies jumped 50% in the first quarter of 2026 from a year ago, as AI startups try to win over the world\u2019s finance capital.<\/p>\n
AI has already upended the digital advertising sector. Now, more tech companies are turning to traditional static ads, Victoria Mottesheard, east region vice president of marketing at Outfront Media, which sells the MTA\u2019s ad space, told Semafor. Tech companies now make up 15% of all ads on New York transit, and the sector is among the top categories for New York transit, along with medical and entertainment companies.<\/p>\n
Know More <\/p>\n
Many of the AI ads are geared toward selling AI services to healthcare, finance or other businesses; some are from consumer brands and established tech companies showing off their AI products.<\/p>\n
Some AI ads intentionally target transit lines that run through Wall Street to reach finance workers, Mottesheard said. Others target areas around convention centers during buzzy AI conferences.<\/p>\n
Generating buzz is part of the equation. The average New Yorker\u2019s commute is 30 minutes and the \u201cshared experience\u2026inherently sparks conversation,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
And ironically, as more people turn to chatbots and agents for internet searches<\/a>, it\u2019s getting more difficult for AI brands to get in front of consumers through the channels the tech industry has long relied on.<\/p>\n That \u201cwill place a bigger premium on reaching real humans,\u201d Mottesheard said.<\/p>\n New York still trails Silicon Valley in its embrace of AI ads: Tech represented about 40% of first-quarter advertising across all media in San Francisco, according to Outfront.<\/p>\n While Outfront declined to provide specific dollar figures on the AI-linked spend, one AI company, Friend, said it put more than $1 million<\/a> last year toward plastering the city\u2019s subway stations in a much-discussed ad campaign.<\/p>\n The View From Advertisers <\/p>\n Marc Lore, CEO of food-tech startup Wonder, said advertising on the New York subway isn\u2019t about direct ROI. It\u2019s about implanting your brand in people\u2019s heads.<\/p>\n The subconscious impression that a train ad creates \u201cultimately increases your conversion on the channels that are easily trackable<\/a>,\u201d like physical mail and social media, Lore recently said on Semafor\u2019s show. Word of mouth is a factor, too.<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe somebody got a direct mail piece and they were just throwing it away, and they somehow don\u2019t even remember seeing it on the subway, and they did,\u201d he said, \u201cand it looks more familiar to them.\u201d<\/p>\n Notable <\/p>\n Curbed last year looked into the \u201cmarketspeak\u201d that took over the MTA, including some \u201cnonsense subway ads<\/a>\u201d that would only make sense to a fraction of AI-minded riders. \u201cThe economics of the tech industry are a little abstract, more a matter of hope and optics than of reality,\u201d a writer and former software engineer said.<\/p>\n