Apartment-elevator screens are the only ad surface that delivers ~24 daily exposures inside the buildings international students live in, captured at the moment they're commuting to campus, opening the fridge, walking out for groceries — the IKEA visit they're already planning. We've ranked 596 student-relevant residential properties across ON / BC / Montreal against StatsCan census variables for South Asian and East Asian visible-minority %, age 20–24 %, and non-permanent resident % (the closest census proxy for international student visa holders). The recommended buy is the highest-indexing 60.
RBC is offering an IKEA gift with international-student bank account sign-up. The audience is A18–24, new to country, in the early-decision window for both housing and a bank — with a focus on South Asian and East Asian students in Ontario, BC, and Montreal. The ask: place the offer in DOOH where they live, study, and commute, with a digital extension layered on the same audience.
Every property's catchment was scored against StatsCan 2021 Census variables — visible-minority breakdowns, age cohort %, non-permanent resident %, recent-immigrant %. The recommended Tier 2 buy ranks in the top decile on all three.
South Asian + Chinese + Korean + Japanese + Southeast Asian + Filipino visible minority concentration in the building catchment. Concentrated in Waterloo, Scarborough, North York, Brampton, Burnaby, Richmond, downtown Montreal.
Non-permanent residents — the closest census proxy for international student visa holders, plus work permits and refugee claimants. The 5.8× index means one in seven adults in catchment, vs one in forty nationally.
The exact undergrad / early-graduate window. Not just student-leaning — student-saturated. Buildings adjacent to UWaterloo, McGill / Concordia, TMU/Ryerson, SFU, UBC drove the top ranks.
Each tier is a complete package: residential-elevator DOOH at $8 net CPM (off $10.50 rate card) plus a paired digital re-targeting layer that captures device IDs at OOH point-of-exposure and re-serves the same audience on mobile and CTV. Pick a tier; nothing else to negotiate.
Each building was selected because its catchment over-indexed on the audience — the side effect is that those catchments are the streets and apartments next to Canada's most international-student-saturated campuses. Every major institution with 5,000+ international students is represented.
RBC's brief asks for housing, campus, and commute. Residential-elevator DOOH covers all three in a single placement.
Every property in the buy is an apartment building (rental or condo) or university residence. ~24 elevator exposures per resident per day — captive, ad-blocker-proof, no skip. The IKEA furniture-offer creative lives at the literal point of decision: the move-in.
Top-30 buildings are within walking or short-transit distance of UWaterloo, McGill/Concordia, TMU, U of T, SFU, UBC. The audience is reached on every grocery run, laundry trip, package delivery — without buying any campus inventory directly.
Sherbourne (TMU/U of T) · Mackay-Crescent (McGill/Concordia) · Hespeler-Sunview (Waterloo) · UniverCity (SFU): the recommended buy concentrates on commute corridors connecting the densest student housing to campus. Re-targeting layer extends the message to mobile during transit.
VI's screen network is integrated with Mobilewalla / Adsquare device-graph: every screen's lat-lon × dwell-time captures device IDs of people exposed. Those devices are then re-served the IKEA-offer creative on mobile / CTV via the DSP. The OOH and the digital extension hit the same audience — not a new one.
International student rides the elevator. Sees the IKEA-offer creative on the VI screen.
VI captures device IDs at the screen via Mobilewalla / Adsquare partnership. Audience is now portable.
Same student gets the same offer on Instagram / TikTok / CTV — at the moment they're researching apartment furniture.
Three flight options inside the brief's window. The primary recommendation aligns the flight to the international-student arrival surge and the IKEA back-to-school furniture peak.
Captures the arrival surge plus the first three weeks of fall semester. International students setting up housing and banking; IKEA back-to-school furniture window peaking. Highest conversion likelihood for the offer.
Post-orientation. Students settling in, considering longer-term banking and furniture decisions. Lower urgency, deeper consideration.
Early arrivals — graduate programs, summer English programs, students with August lease starts. Lower volume but less competition for share of voice.
VI inventory file (1,002 active Canadian properties with screens, geo, and 4-week impression model) joined to Spotzi 2021 StatsCan census enrichment at FSA / property catchment level — 765 demographic variables per property.
Province ∈ {ON, BC, QC}. QC restricted to Greater Montreal CMA. Property type ∈ apartment rental / condo / university residence / college building. Senior living, hotels, hospitals, malls excluded.
Composite z-score: (a) Visible Minority South Asian + (Chinese + Korean + Japanese + SE Asian + Filipino), and (b) Age 20–24 % + 1.5× Non-Permanent Resident % + 0.5× Recent Immigrant %. NPR is weighted highest as the closest census proxy for international student visa.
Spotzi "4-wk imps / 1 ad spot": average 4-week impressions delivered by one 15-second ad spot per screen, factoring building circulation, dwell, screen visibility, and loop length. Aggregated to building level.
$8.00 net CPM off $10.50 rate card. Net cost = (Impressions × $8) ÷ 1,000. Production, programming, and delivery included; no incremental tech fee. Re-targeting is flat-budget at $5k / $12k / $20k tier levels.
Daily impression delivery via VI dashboard. End-of-flight: post-buy report with delivered imps vs plan, completion %, and audience-mix audit (when paired with mobile re-targeting partner).
Standard creative spec: 15s vertical for elevator. Multilingual creative (English, Mandarin, Punjabi, Hindi) recommended for top-tier buildings. VI handles asset trafficking and per-building scheduling.
Spotzi demographic % are based on 2021 Census FSA-level enrichment of the building catchment, not in-building census. Treat as directional indices, not absolute counts. Properties with census suppression are zero-filled in scoring (rare).
Confirm tier and flight window and the campaign is in market in 14 business days. Detailed building-level specs, impressions, lat/lon, and net costing available on request.