High-profile outdoor billboards are a focal aspect of the Shanghai urban landscape. Options include displaying full-height branding on high-rise buildings, in pedestrian and retail districts, around public transport networks, and close to visitor attractions like The Bund, which attracts countless tourists every day.

Examples of Shanghai billboard advertising are prevalent throughout Nanjing West Road, one of the busiest shopping streets in the world, and across the CBD, Shanghai’s well-developed centre of business, trade, commerce, and finance, with a significant concentration of professionals and corporate visitors.

Immersive, bright, and data-backed digital billboards take the visibility and impact of classic billboards and inject technological features. Each screen is entertaining and contextual, and delivers impressions from audiences actively engaging in the messaging shown.

Shanghai’s younger audiences respond well to digital advertising, with options to erect screens in places like Global Harbour, the biggest retail complex in the city. This centre spans hundreds of thousands of square metres and offers options to promote brands or services around shops, dining spaces, and entertainment facilities, including an ultra-modern VR theme park.

The city’s busy, efficient and low-cost public transport system is widely used and a way to travel around Shanghai relied on by tourists, locals and commuters alike. Brands often prioritise billboards and screens along the Shanghai Metro, which connects every major district with multiple lines and over 800 km of track.

Other transport advertising placements include those around the Shanghai bus network, which operates 2,000 lines with countless stations, stops, and shelters, and promotional displays aimed at newly arrived visitors using the Maglev high-speed connection between Pudong Airport and Longyang Road.

Shanghai Pudong International and Shanghai Hongqiao International are the two major airports serving the city, both with billboards and screens around terminals, security areas, business lounges, public transport stations, and car parking facilities.

Pudong is the largest airport in the region, the third largest in China and a major international aviation centre, with airlines providing services to 70 worldwide destinations. In contrast, brands keen to engage with Chinese consumer groups and investors can utilise the greater proportion of regional and domestic flights arriving in Hongqiao.

Place-based promotions offer brands a way to advertise through any selected format, but in locations and environments where they know audiences will be engaged, have a strong intent to react, or fit into their ideal viewer demographic.

The National Exhibition and Convention Centre (NECC) is a good example. It is the largest such structure in the world, covering 500,000 square metres, and is a key place to promote branding and services relevant to professionals. Bands can also leverage the transport links that run between the NECC, Hongqiao Airport, and Hongqiao Railway Station to target those same consumer segments.