Public transit is only as effective as the barriers between riders and a fare. For occasional riders in the Puget Sound region, that barrier had long been a practical one: boarding required an ORCA card, a system product that demanded advance planning and a separate purchase. For someone hopping a bus to a weekend event or trying transit for the first time, that friction was often enough to make driving feel easier.
ORCA's new Tap-to-Pay capability changed that equation entirely: now any credit, debit card, phone, or smartwatch can tap to ride, instantly. The campaign's objective was to introduce this capability to the people most likely to benefit—occasional riders across King, Kitsap, Pierce, and Snohomish counties—while educating them on new fare enforcement guidelines that accompanied the launch.
By removing the last practical barrier to trying transit, Tap-to-Pay had the potential to make public transportation more accessible and equitable across one of the most diverse and geographically varied metro regions in the country.
The central challenge was reaching people who didn't already see themselves as transit users. Occasional riders don't identify with the system—so the campaign needed to meet them where they were, not where transit hoped they'd be.
The creative platform delivered a simple, welcoming message: every card is invited. Animated credit and debit card characters brought the idea to life with wit and energy, making a functional feature announcement feel genuinely fun rather than institutional. The tone was an invitation, not an instruction.
Media placement was the campaign's most locally intentional element. Out-of-home ran directly on the infrastructure it was promoting—bus wraps, interior car cards, and digital platform ads across six regional transit agencies: Sound Transit, King County Metro, Community Transit, Pierce Transit, Everett Transit, and Kitsap Transit. There may be no more contextually precise local strategy than advertising a transit feature on the very vehicles that feature applies to, reaching people already riding while capturing attention from potential riders at street level.
Digital channels extended reach across the four-county region with deliberate precision. Meta ran in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese—ensuring the message reached the Puget Sound's diverse communities, not just its default audience. YouTube added video depth, with non-skippable and TrueView formats allowing the animated creative to work across different attention contexts.
Against a $130,000 budget, the Tap-to-Pay campaign delivered reach and engagement well above expectations across every channel.
Digital media generated more than 13.4 million impressions, while transit and out-of-home placements across six agencies contributed an estimated 41.5 million more—for a combined regional footprint exceeding 54 million impressions. The Meta campaign was particularly efficient, delivering 3.5 million impressions at a $2.68 CPM, 68% more efficient than the $8.50 benchmark. The animated creative proved immediately arresting: the Thumb Stop Rate—the share of impressions that triggered a three-second video play—hit 13.93%, a strong signal that the card characters were cutting through a competitive social feed.
On YouTube, both formats exceeded benchmarks. The 15-second non-skip ad achieved a 91.88% completion rate against an 85% benchmark. The skippable 30-second TrueView drove a 62.42% view-through rate against a 40% benchmark—a result that speaks directly to the creative's ability to hold attention even when audiences had every option to skip.
Site-side engagement reflected genuine interest in the feature. The campaign drove 4,263 users to the ORCA site with a 77.8% overall engagement rate. YouTube-referred visitors were especially engaged: TrueView audiences averaged nearly four minutes on-site, and NonSkip visitors viewed 3.45 pages per session—well above typical display benchmarks.
By removing a practical barrier to transit adoption and communicating it in the languages residents actually speak, across the vehicles they actually use, ORCA Tap-to-Pay made a regional mobility system feel genuinely welcoming—and measurably easier to choose.
