Moving pictures.

Marka Television, a Colombian television production company, has found a way to take advantage of the viewers riding mass transit and on tourist buses around the country: Show them ads from Colombian small businesses. The company came up with Travel Marketing, a firm based in Call that is the first in the nation to sell advertising on inter-city buses. Getting a less-than-20-second spot on an intercity bus, the main form of transportation between cities in Colombia, costs just US$150 per month. "The commercial runs every day, on every bus, and on every route," says Carlos Andres Velasquez, the 40-year-old founder and manager of Travel Marketing. "In comparison, getting 20 seconds on [Colombian television channel] RCN could cost as much as $12,500." Travel Marketing--which posted $250,000 in sales in 2005 and expects to hit $700,000 in the year ahead--has signed deals with the biggest inter-city bus lines, including Expreso Bolivariano and Expreso Trejos, which have a half million and 150,000 travelers each day, respectively. According to Velasquez, a captive public is ideal for the kinds of advertising he sells. People are already sitting still and are likely to remain that way anywhere from four hours to up to 32 hours on a given bus trip. One ad buyer has been Plica, a 120-employee clothing company that sells to middleclass women in Medellin. It spends between $700 and $1,000 a month on video bus ads. "This is a significant alternative since reaching a mass audience through television or the print press is much more expensive," says Plica's manager, Jaime Botero. "And we're reaching the audience we want to reach."