Banners: an in-depth guide for Transit partners

On this page:

• What are banners?
  • Promotional vs. operational banners
• Best practices
  • When to use service alerts instead of banners
• Request a banner
  • How to target banners
  • Banner priority
  • Template copy
  • Banner colours
• Banner stats

What are banners?

Transit's in-app banners communicate directly with your riders to inform them about major system changes, system-wide disruptions, or solicit feedback for occasional surveys.

Banners display at the top of the main screen when a rider opens Transit. Tapping on the banner opens a mobile-enabled web page or launches a specific feature in the app.

Promotional and operational banners

Transit partners benefit from four custom promotional banners per calendar year. Promotional banners include communications that, for example, (1) invite riders to take a survey, (2) solicit applications for operator hiring, or (3) promote local events.

In exceptional cases, like major disruptions caused by extreme weather or strikes, or widespread issues specific to the app, Transit will publish banners that do not count towards this four-per-year limit. These are considered operational banners.

Operational banners also include major service changes affecting many routes, and fare-free days.

For more information about the difference between promotional and operational banners, and any questions about pricing, please email us at partners@transit.app.

Best practices

Banners are better suited for some situations than others. Here’s a quick breakdown:

✅ Banners are the right tool for:

• Service changes that will affect multiple lines and/or all riders
• System-wide disruptions, like those due to extreme weather or strikes
• Major planned disruptions, like maintenance work
• Inviting riders to take a survey, attend an open house, or contribute feedback
• Informing riders about a fare-free day (banner will be active for one day only)

Here’s what these kinds of banners might look like in Transit:

❌ Banners are not the right tool for:

• Incidents, disruptions, or information specific to one or two lines/routes,
• One or multiple stops are out of service or have modified service
• Communicating information specific to stops, station entrances, or routes

In these cases, we suggest using service alerts instead.

When to use service alerts instead of banners

Service alerts are targeted to specific routes and immediately visible to riders. Riders can also choose to subscribe to service alerts for specific lines and receive push notifications when a new alert is published. Here’s what service alerts look like in the app:

Unlike banners, service alerts can be created and published immediately by partner agencies, either through the GTFS-rt Service Alerts feed or with access to Transit Terminal. They don’t need to be requested in advance or set up by staff at Transit.

Again, service alerts are best used when:

• One or multiple transit routes are out of service or have modified service
• One or multiple stops are out of service or have modified service
• Communicating information specific to stops, station entrances, or routes

See our guide to Sending alerts with Transit Terminal for a full breakdown.

Request a banner

To request a banner, please fill out the banner request form at least 1 week in advance of the start date.

These items are necessary:

• Topic of the banner;
• URL to open when users tap the banner, if there is one. The web page must be mobile-enabled. The URL is not counted in the character limit stated below.
• Start date
• End date

These items are optional:

• Suggested first line (max. 60 characters) and second line (max. 70 characters) of text. Please see template copy examples below.
• Translations of this text in additional languages, if applicable (same character restrictions apply). We can handle Spanish and French translations in-house. Transit can publish the banner in other languages as well, but you will have to provide the translation (in-line with our character limits).

Once we have received the form request, we'll follow up by email and get to work setting up the banner campaign. At the end of a banner campaign, we’ll send you key stats like total taps and click-through-rate by email (see Banner stats below).  

How to target banners

By geography

The simplest way to target a banner is by geographic area. All users who open Transit while located within the set geographical area will see the banner.

When describing the geographical area to be targeted (under “Banner coverage” in the banner request form), be specific as possible. The geographical area can cover the whole service area for a transit system or multiple smaller areas.

By cohort

It’s also possible to target banners by app behaviour, for riders who interact with specific routes, stops, or have their device set to a specific language. Banners targeted in this way still need a geographical area to be set.

If you’d like to target a banner by cohort, please specify what conditions you’d like to target under “Banner coverage” in the banner request form or communicate with us by email at partners@transit.app.

By route in Main Screen

For regions with many overlapping transit systems, it may be helpful to restrict banner visibility to riders with your transit system’s routes on the Main Screen. This can be done with feed codes or specific route IDs.

Feed codes:

1. Banner appears only if specified transit systems appear in top 4 routes on the Main Screen
2. Banner does not appear if specified transit systems appear in top 4 routes on the Main Screen

Route IDs:

1. Banner appears only if specified route IDs are in the top 4 routes on the Main Screen
2. Banner does not appear if specified route IDs are in the top 4 routes on the Main Screen

If you’d like to target a banner by route in Nearby, please specify how you’d like to target under “Banner coverage” in the banner request form or communicate with us by email at partners@transit.app.

Banner priority

It’s possible to customize banner priority.

• Transit can run multiple banners at once and have the banners rotate every time the user opens the app. Example: if someone opens the app in the morning, they will see banner A. The next time they open the app, they will see banner B.
• A banner is particularly important or urgent. Transit can set it to appear above all other banners and system messages.

Transit will show the highest priority banner on the first two app opens of the day, then lower-priority banners on subsequent app opens, from the highest to the lowest priority banners.

If you’d like to set a custom banner priority or publish multiple banners, communicate with us by email at partners@transit.app.

Template copy

Some announcements pop up frequently enough in the app that we've compiled a list of topics for which we have template copy (available in English, French, and Spanish).

If your banner falls into one of these categories, don't worry about reinventing the wheel — we've got your copy ready for you!

Banner colours

New banners are given a default dark blue colour, but this can change based on the type of message your banner contains. We reserve yellow #FFA900 for major service alerts (real-time outage, major service changes) and red #E51304 for emergency situations (hurricane, flooding, blizzard conditions).

Want your agency colour to shine? Don't hesitate to ask us to set up the banner with a custom hex code.

Banner stats

We can provide the following stats at the end of a banner campaign:

• Unique rider views
• Unique rider taps
• Click-through-rate

If you’d like stats to be sent to additional team members, please include their respective email addresses on the banner request form.