Even your taxi receipt isn’t safe from advertisements.
City officials want to put ads on the back of yellow cab receipts, a change that would resize the little white slips into larger sheets of paper the size of grocery-store tabs.
The Taxi & Limousine Commission will take up the issue at a public hearing on Jan. 19, possibly voting on the change as early as that day.
The news had some New Yorkers bemoaning the loss of one of the last ad-free spaces in the consumer capital of the world.
“There’s advertising everywhere you look already, especially New York,” groaned Martha Tillson, 24, Manhattan.
“Why this now?”
But like it or not, the idea will catch fire among advertisers, marketing execs said.
“It’s a great idea, especially in New York City where you have tons of people traveling on their corporate accounts,” said Janine Just, a managing partner at the marketing firm Blaq Group.
“The ads could be local or national. Those receipts are going to be traveling with them, because they need to expense it.”
Revenues from taxi ads typically go to the technology vendors, who install the televisions in the back seat of cabs and the credit-card system.
Depending on the contract, that money is sometimes split with the medallion owner.
Taxi officials swear that riders will actually benefit from the ads — other than by learning when the latest sales are.
“Any source of revenue for the taxi industry helps us keep down the fare for passengers,” explained TLC Commissioner David Yassky.
The only people who won’t see increased income from the ads are the cabdrivers themselves.
And while many taxis feature racy strip-club ads on their roofs, jiggle joints would be banned from touting their services on the backs of receipts.
Any advertisement on receipts would be considered an in-taxi ad — similar to the ones shown on TaxiTV — and follow a strict standard of protocol that prohibits sexually oriented businesses from advertising.
Additional reporting by Helen Freund