They all put a message on a moving vehicle. That is where the similarity ends. Each row below includes where the format loses, because a comparison that never says no is a pitch.
| Format | Best for | Creative | Measured by | Loses to |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Digital car top | Multi-message campaigns across one metro | Remote swap, by daypart or GPS zone | GPS route logs plus impression modelling | Wraps, when you want one unmissable image and no screen |
| Vehicle wrap and 360 wrap | Launches where the car itself should be the ad | Fixed for the flight, printed vinyl | GPS plus device-location attribution | Digital tops, when creative needs to change mid-flight |
| LED truck | Events, stadium perimeters, product launches | Video, remote swap, dayparted | GPS dwell logs at named locations | Car tops, on cost per impression across a whole metro |
| Swarm | Frequency inside one market, fast | Single message across the whole fleet | Fleet-level impression modelling | Single-vehicle buys, when budget is tight |
| In-car screen | Attention and completion, not street reach | Video, per-ride delivery | Completed views per ride | Every exterior format, on raw reach |
| Hologram and specialty builds | Earned attention, press, social pickup | Bespoke per campaign | Social and press pickup, plus GPS | Everything, on efficiency. It is a stunt line item |
A dual-sided LED screen on the roof of a working vehicle. The reason to pick it over anything else is that the message is not fixed: a restaurant group can run brunch creative in one neighbourhood at 10am and a dinner offer in another at 6pm, from the same fleet on the same day. Nothing else in out-of-home changes its mind that fast.
Vinyl across the body panels, partial or full. It has the largest uninterrupted surface of any format here and it works with no power, no screen and no hardware failure mode. The tradeoff is commitment: what you print is what runs until the wrap comes off.
A full-size digital billboard mounted on a truck that can park where the audience already gathered. The value is placement precision on a specific day, not sustained metro-wide coverage. Judge it on dwell time at the locations you named, not on total miles driven.
A coordinated group of vehicles carrying the same creative through one city at the same time. It buys frequency the way a heavy TV week does: the same person sees it three times on one commute. Used for launch weeks and category moments, rarely for always-on.
A screen facing the passenger for the length of the ride. This is the only format in the category with a seated, captive viewer, so it behaves more like video advertising than like out-of-home. Small audience, high completion.
Hologram vehicles, glass trucks, food-truck builds, pedicabs, projection. These exist to be photographed by other people. Do not buy them for CPM; buy them when the goal is that the campaign gets talked about beyond the people who physically saw it.
The format follows the objective, not the other way round. Tell us what the campaign has to achieve and in which markets, and we will tell you which of these fits, including when the answer is none of them.