Citymapper faced a strategic commercial challenge: a revenue ceiling dictated by existing ad formats. While their display ads excelled at upper-funnel awareness and their Local Ads drove lower-funnel location awareness and footfall, the team lacked a solution for high-value, engagement-focused consideration briefs.

Advertisers - particularly in the entertainment and FMCG sectors - were eager to use video to reach Citymapper’s captive commuter audience, but the team couldn’t help them. Furthermore, the UX challenge was immense: how do you integrate video into a highly functional, fast-paced transit app without disrupting the user, whilst ensuring the advertiser actually captures their full attention?

To capture video budgets without compromising UX, the product and engineering teams identified a unique window of commuter attention: the journey description screen. Once a user selects their route, they transition from a hectic research mindset into a calm, receptive state, simply checking the app for progress.

Citymapper’s innovation lies in dynamically adapting the ad delivery to the commuter's real-time physical context. If their app detects the user has embarked on their chosen transport and is in a calm state, the In-Journey Video Ad automatically plays. Conversely, if the user is still waiting at a stop or transferring between modes, the ad appears as a tap-to-play unit. In this scenario, the video impression is only charged when the video starts, ensuring a risk-free environment for advertisers with value-add thumbnail impressions as a cherry on top.

This dual-state delivery creates a seamless ecosystem. Commuters retain control during hectic moments, while advertisers maximise engagement when attention is highest. Furthermore, the team layered this with Citymapper’s deep contextual signals, allowing brands to target by geography, time of day (e.g., McDonald's breakfast campaign), or specific destinations like airports.

This breakthrough opened entirely new doors. Citymapper became the only mapping solution able to safely and effectively deploy video advertising. It provided a perfect home for entertainment brands requiring trailer views, like campaigns for Wicked: For Good and Superman. By perfectly marrying the commuter mindset with dynamic ad serving, the team created a premium, highly contextual video format that standard map solutions cannot safely offer.

The commercial impact of In-Journey Video Ads has been transformative. Launched in Q3 2025, the format delivered strong incremental growth in direct sales revenue by Q4 alone.

Crucially, it successfully unlocked significant new budgets from brand categories that previously had limited engagement with our platform. The team successfully captured premium video budgets from major entertainment studios like Warner Bros. and Universal, whilst unlocking new spend from global brands like McDonald's and Diageo.

Performance metrics have fundamentally shifted Citymapper’s value proposition. In-Journey Video Ads achieve CTR that is over 10x increase compared to their standard display ads. Furthermore, campaigns are seeing average view rates of up to 65%, proving that commuters are actively engaging with the content. By proving that map-based video can be safe and highly effective, Citymapper has successfully diversified its product suite and established a powerful new driver for sustained revenue growth.

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