Measuring Campaign Impact on Budapest’s Busiest Billboards

How RVC.DIGITAL turned real-world pedestrian data into actionable audience insights

Measuring the City — One Viewer at a Time

In outdoor advertising, visibility is only half the story. The real question is: Who actually saw your ad—and how did they react to it?

That’s exactly what RVC.DIGITAL set out to answer through a long-term reference measurement project in Budapest. By deploying real-time sensors on high-traffic city-light displays at major tram stops, we collected continuous foot traffic and audience data day and night—across seasons, weather conditions, and daily cycles.

These aren’t estimates or projections. This is real data, gathered in real urban environments.

Our system has been running across Budapest’s busiest public transit zones, including tram platforms where pedestrian volume can exceed tens of thousands per day.

By continuously monitoring these environments, RVC.DIGITAL provides media owners, advertisers and urban planners with reliable insights into pedestrian movement patterns, peak hours, campaign visibility, and more.

This makes Budapest one of the few cities in Europe with a live, sensor-based reference database for real-world urban OOH campaign analytics.

Urban measurement is not just about technology—it’s about placement.

Our team applies best practices for camera positioning based on the geometry of the tram stop, the billboard structure, and the flow of foot traffic. This includes configuring different focal lengths to capture both the platform and the opposite side of the street—ensuring no relevant traffic is missed.

Proper placement ensures that every campaign surface is optimized for both visibility and data capture.

While footfall gives us a valuable baseline (how many people passed by), the RVC.DIGITAL platform delivers much more:

This level of granularity helps advertisers understand which creative works, when and with whom, and how they can optimize campaigns based on real-time audience behavior.

Each RVC.DIGITAL measurement point is built on a compact, low-power setup:

All data is processed locally, with no personal images or video stored. Only aggregated, anonymized data is uploaded to the RVC cloud dashboard, where users can monitor performance in real time.

This setup allows for seamless deployment on existing digital signage infrastructure — no large servers, no intrusive equipment, just smart edge-based sensing.

All RVC.DIGITAL measurements are fully GDPR-compliant:

This enables precise measurement in public urban environments without compromising viewer privacy.

This Budapest reference project shows how OOH campaigns can be both visible and measurable—day by day, hour by hour, person by person.

By combining footfall, visual attention, and demographic data, we move beyond impressions into true audience understanding.

Whether you’re planning your next city-wide activation or simply want to know if people noticed your message, RVC.DIGITAL delivers the metrics that matter.