The Month-Three Decision: Extend, Scale, Move Zones or Stop an Auto Campaign

Why Is Month Three the Right Moment to Decide?

Most auto campaigns are first booked for three months. That is long enough for the same households to pass the same autos at the school gate, the market and the station dozens of times, and short enough that a business is not locked into a zone that does not work. It is also the point at which the agreement asks a question: does the campaign extend at the same rate on notice, or lapse? Our contract checklist covers how that clause should read. This post covers how to answer it.

There is a second reason to decide at month three rather than month one. Response to outdoor advertising builds with repetition. A household that saw the hood twice in week one is not the same as a household that has seen it forty times by week ten. The IPA research by Les Binet and Peter Field, published as The Long and the Short of It, found that short-term sales effects show up quickly and fade, while brand effects build over longer periods. Three months gives you a fair read of the short-term response and an early look at whether familiarity is building. One month gives you neither.

This post is about the decision, not the artwork. If the answer is "the zones are right but the message is wrong", that is a creative question, and our post on mid-campaign creative refresh covers when and how to change a live fleet's panels.

What Evidence Should You Bring to the Review?

A month-three review is only as good as the numbers on the table. Collect these before the meeting, not during it.

1. 1Response by zone. Calls and WhatsApp messages on a number that appears only on the autos, or scans of a QR code that appears only on the autos, split by zone if each zone carries its own number. Our guide to QR codes and phone numbers on transit ads explains how to set this up so the count is clean.
2. 2Sales or footfall against a baseline. The same three months last year, or the three months before the campaign, with prices and offers held roughly constant. If you can, compare against a similar area where you ran no autos.
3. 3Proof of deployment. Installation photos matched to registration numbers, GPS route reports, and a record of which autos dropped out and how quickly they were replaced. Our GPS tracking and photo verification guide lists what to ask for.
4. 4Panel condition. Recent photos of a sample of autos. Eco-solvent prints on a sound base should last well beyond three months; peeling or faded panels change the cost of extending.
5. 5The season ahead. A school that advertised for admissions does not need the same fleet in the month admissions close. A store heading into Navratri and Diwali probably needs more, not less.

A brand recall survey can help large campaigns, but our brand recall guide is honest about its limit: below about 100 autos the sampling noise is larger than the effect. For most local campaigns, response tracking and sales by zone are the evidence that matters.

How Do You Read the Results Zone by Zone?

Lay the three months of response side by side for each zone and match the pattern to a decision.

Two rules keep this honest. First, judge each zone against its own baseline, not against the best zone. A quiet residential zone that doubled its enquiries has done better than a busy market zone that added ten percent. Second, change one thing at a time. If you move zones and change the artwork in the same month, you will not know at month six which change made the difference.

What Does Each Option Cost?

The money behaves differently for each option, and that difference often decides close calls. These figures use our standard rates: hood branding at ₹580 per auto per month, the 24×18 inch sticker at ₹230 and the 24×6 inch strip at ₹140, with one-time printing on top and metro union charges extra. The cost guide has the full rate card.

Moving zones is not free, because autos work from their own stands and cannot be relocated. Moving means releasing the autos in one area and branding new ones in another, which is a fresh installation. If the artwork names a locality or a branch, it has to be reprinted anyway.

When Should You Scale, and When Is It a Mistake?

Scale where the response curve is still climbing. That is the sign that the zone has more households who would respond if they saw you more often or saw you on more of their routes.

Scale into density, not into breadth. Our fleet-size planner puts working density at 25 to 40 hood autos per zone, where a zone is a pocket of three to five square kilometres served by two to four stands. If a rising zone is running at 20 autos, take it to 30 before you add a new zone. If it is already at 40, add the adjoining zone your customers also come from rather than packing more autos into the same lanes.

The common mistake is scaling everything because one zone worked. If Zone A is producing and Zone B is flat, doubling both doubles the cost of Zone B's silence. Scale what is working, and treat the rest separately.

When Should You Move Zones?

Move a zone when deployment was verified, the message was sound and response still sat at baseline for three months. That pattern says the people who live and travel in that area are not your customers, or not yet.

Before choosing the new zone, look at where your existing customers come from. A billing address, a delivery pin code, an enquiry register or a "which area are you from?" question at the counter will usually show two or three localities that already send you business without any advertising. Those are the strongest candidates for the move, because the fleet then reinforces a demand that already exists. Our zone targeting guide covers how to draw that catchment on a map, and our city pages for Indore, Pune and Hyderabad list the areas we cover.

Keep the strong zone running while you move the weak one. The strong zone is your control: if the moved autos produce in their new area while the strong zone holds steady, you know the move worked.

When Is Stopping the Right Call?

Stopping is a legitimate result, not a failure. It is the right call when:

• No zone beat its baseline over three months, the fleet was delivered as booked and the message was clear.
• The season that drove demand is over, such as an admissions window, a store opening or a festival sale.
• The business has changed: the offer, the branch or the product that the hood promotes no longer exists.
• The cash is needed somewhere with a clearer return.

Stop cleanly. Give notice as the agreement requires, ask for de-branding photos so you know the panels are off, and keep the response data. A business that stops after a clear test and comes back for its peak season with a better-chosen zone is using the medium well. Auto advertising does not suit every business. A brand whose customers are scattered across a whole city and buy only online may find that a hyperlocal fleet never produces a measurable local response, and the honest answer then is to stop.

What Mistakes Do Advertisers Make at Month Three?

• Deciding on the campaign average. One good zone and one bad zone average out to "fine", and the business extends both. Look at each zone.
• Letting the contract roll over without a review. If the agreement extends on notice, put the review date in the calendar two weeks before the notice deadline.
• Judging brand recall on a small fleet. Below about 100 autos, a recall survey cannot reliably detect the change. Use response and sales.
• Changing the zone and the artwork together. You lose the ability to tell which change worked.
• Dropping the tracking number. A refresh that removes the auto-only number makes month six impossible to measure.
• Blaming the medium for a delivery failure. Check the proof of deployment before deciding the zone did not respond.

Our post on common auto advertising mistakes covers the earlier mistakes, the ones made at booking.

What Does a Month-Three Review Look Like in Practice?

The decision: extend Zone A at 30 autos, because the curve is still rising and the zone is already at working density. Move Zone B's 30 autos to Zone C, the colony that the billing records show already sends the store regular customers. The next three months cost ₹1,04,400 in media again, plus about ₹7,500 to ₹12,000 to print and install 30 new hoods in Zone C. Zone A's artwork stays exactly as it is, so that if Zone C produces, the business knows the zone made the difference.

At 10,000 to 12,000 daily impressions per hood auto, 30 autos over 90 days deliver roughly 27 to 32 million impressions in each zone, a cost per thousand of about ₹1.6 to ₹1.9 on media. That is cheap reach, but reach in the wrong zone is still the wrong reach. The month-three review is where you move it.

How Does This Fit the Wider Picture?

India's auto rickshaw fleet runs into the millions of registered vehicles on MoRTH's Vahan data, and autos spend their day on short, repeated trips through the same neighbourhoods. The Pitch Madison Advertising Report has for years shown outdoor as a steady share of Indian ad spend, and Nielsen's out-of-home research finds that people remember messages they pass repeatedly on routine journeys. Since 2020 we have run campaigns on 5,000+ autos for 500+ brands across 20+ cities, and the businesses that get the most from the medium are rarely the ones that chose the perfect zones at the start. They are the ones that looked honestly at the numbers at month three and moved the fleet to where their customers were.

A campaign does not succeed or fail as a whole. Each zone gives its own answer, and month three is when you listen to it.