What is street-level media?
Street-level media puts full-HD screens on delivery riders across London. How the format works, what it is good at, and which brands and agencies it suits.
Street-level media is advertising that moves at street level with the people who already travel around a city all day. In practice it means full-HD digital screens mounted on delivery riders’ bags, playing video and still creative as the riders work their way through London.
The name is deliberate. For decades, out-of-home advertising has been defined by the fixed site: the roadside billboard, the bus shelter, the cross-track panel on the Underground. Street-level media sits somewhere else. It is at eye level, a few metres from the people seeing it, and often on streets where fixed formats cannot go.
A short definition
Street-level media is a form of mobile digital out-of-home (DOOH). Delivery riders and couriers carry the screens as part of their normal working day. Each screen is connected, so what it shows can change with location, time of day or a live data feed. Every play is logged with a timestamp, a GPS position and a screen ID, which gives the advertiser a record of where and when their ad actually ran.
That is what separates it from older mobile advertising, such as a van towing a static poster around. The creative is digital, so it can rotate, update and respond to conditions. The riders are out doing real deliveries in real traffic, where a van is usually driving a loop to be seen. And because every play is recorded, you can check exactly what ran and where.
How it works
The screen
Curb uses LCD panels, the same basic technology as a phone or laptop screen, built into a weatherproof delivery bag. LCD gives full-HD resolution, accurate colour and small type that stays readable up close. That matters because street-level audiences really are close: waiting at a crossing, standing outside a café, sitting at the next table on a terrace. We compare the display options in more detail in LCD vs LED screens for mobile advertising.
The rider
The screens are carried by independent delivery riders who opt in and are paid £100 a week to carry a Curb bag. They ride their usual shifts and routes, and the job stays the same apart from the screen on their back. If you ride in London and want to know more, the rider page has the details and the waitlist.
The platform
Each screen reports its position and status in near real time. That telemetry feeds a scheduling system, which decides what to play and when. Advertisers set rules, for example “show this creative inside this zone between 11:30 and 14:00”, and the system applies them play by play. Every play is logged and measured, and advertisers can follow the campaign in a live dashboard filtered by zone.
What street-level media is good at
Reaching places fixed media cannot
Plenty of London’s most valuable streets have no advertising on them at all. Billboards are mostly kept off pedestrianised shopping streets, residential side roads, market lanes and the pavements outside venues. Some of that is down to planning rules and conservation areas. Some of it is simply that there is nowhere to put a panel.
Delivery riders go to all of these places many times a day, because that is where the customers are. A screen on a rider’s bag reaches the street outside a restaurant in Soho, the entrance to a residential block in Hackney or the queue outside a gig in Camden.
Reaching people who avoid other ads
Many of the people brands most want to reach have become very good at avoiding advertising. They use ad-blockers, pay for ad-free streaming tiers, skip pre-roll the moment the button appears and scroll straight past sponsored posts. Younger audiences are the hardest case, which we look at in How to reach Gen Z when they skip every ad.
Out-of-home has always been hard to skip, and street-level media gets closer than most of it. The screen is at eye height, on the street people are already walking down.
Reaching the right moment
Because every screen knows where it is, creative can be matched to place and time. A food brand can run a lunch message in Soho at midday and a late-night one in Shoreditch after ten. A sportswear brand can switch to match-day creative around a stadium on the afternoon of a fixture. Our practical guide to geo-fencing in London goes into this in detail.
What it is less suited to
It is easier to plan street-level media well if you know its limits.
You cannot guarantee a screen will be on a specific street at a specific minute. Riders go where orders take them. Geo-fencing controls what plays when a screen is inside a zone, but it does not send riders into that zone. Viewing moments are short, so very long-form storytelling is a poor fit, and creative works best when the message lands in a few seconds. The screens are also silent, like most out-of-home.
Street-level media works best alongside other channels, adding street-level presence and precise timing to broadcast, social or large-format outdoor.
Who it is for
Brands with a local or urban story
Food and drink, quick commerce, entertainment, fashion, retail and events tend to fit well, as does anything tied to a neighbourhood or a moment. So do brands launching in London that want to be seen on the streets that matter to them.
Media agencies
Agencies need formats they can plan, buy and report on with confidence. Curb gives planners proof of play, an impression estimate for each play and a data feed, so the format can be folded into their own reporting. We explain the measurement side in Proof of play: how to measure mobile DOOH campaigns.
Challenger brands
A single geo-fenced campaign can give a smaller brand a presence on particular streets that would be expensive or impossible to get through fixed sites.
How it compares with other out-of-home
| Factor | Fixed billboard | Bus and taxi livery | Street-level media |
|---|---|---|---|
| Location | One site | Follows set routes or roads | Follows riders into streets, lanes and doorways |
| Creative | Static or rotating digital | Usually static | Full-HD video and stills |
| Targeting | By site | By route or area | By zone and daypart, play by play |
| Proof | Site-level reporting | Campaign-level reporting | Timestamp, GPS and screen ID per play |
Large fixed sites still deliver scale and impact on major roads. Street-level media reaches the smaller streets and the moments in between.
Questions brands ask first
Is it safe? The screens are fixed into the bag and designed to be carried. They play silent video and stills, and riders follow the same rules of the road as any other rider.
Do the screens film people? No. The bags have no cameras and no facial recognition. Audience estimates are modelled from where and when each play ran.
Is creative checked? Yes. Every campaign is reviewed before it goes live and must follow the UK advertising codes.
How is it bought? During our founding period, campaigns are planned directly with our team. You tell us the audience, the areas and the moments you care about, and we build a plan around them.
Where to go next
If you are planning activity in London and want to see how street-level media could fit, the advertisers page covers the format in more depth. Our media pack has the full detail on zones, measurement and founding-partner terms, and you can request it here.