NYC Transit engages travelers On the Go.

The Big Apple is a big city with a big population that needs a big transit system to move those people around: Almost 2 billion people ride the New York City Transit Authority’s subways every year.

With all those people to move around and all that real estate to cover, keeping commuters informed and engaged is a big task.

So the MTA, the New York City Transit Authority, rolled out interactive digital signage kiosks to provide maps, train schedules and alerts — and leveraged those kiosks to also create what are essentially interactive digital pop-up shops through the New York City subway system.

The agency has rolled out nearly 400 of the On the Go kiosks with partners Intersection and Outfront Media, since starting the initial kiosk rollouts back in early 2014.

And it has turned those kiosks into holiday shopping portals for Amazon’s Consumer Electronics Holiday Gift Guide, interactive digital popup shops for the New York Transit Museum (mostly recently for “Dads and Grads” gifts leading up to Father’s Day), and tic-tac-toe game kiosks in an interactive New York Lottery campaign enabling customers to play against MTA riders in other stations in real-time.

Primarily, though, the kiosks provide countdown to arrival, one-touch visual directions based on real-time train status and neighborhood maps. All of these services are paid for by advertising on the kiosks’ dynamic, contextually relevant advertising platform that offers programmatic, place-based video, transactional and interactive capabilities.