Next stop, ad buzz

You might call it tunnel vision.

In a first-of-its-kind commercial for Greater Boston, subway riders will see an ad for the Royal Caribbean cruise line take shape outside the windows of Red Line trains as they travel toward downtown Boston.

Think frame-by-frame animation: 400 still images have been placed on a 1,000-foot stretch of tunnel wall, between the Harvard and Central stations. Timed so riders see 24 images per second, lights flash on and off as a train passes, transforming the images into a moving montage of cruise-goers snorkeling, jet-skiing, and rock-climbing aboard a Royal Caribbean ship.

"Wow. They do think of everything," said Gabe Grant, a Cambridge resident and regular Red Line rider. "I'm pretty psyched about that. It's not the most exciting ride without it."

The ad technology, which makes its New England debut tomorrow, first appeared three years ago in such cities as Atlanta, Budapest, and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Since then, the underground ads have spread to more than a half-dozen subway systems, including Tokyo's and Hong Kong's. They have also been seen from Port Authority Trans-Hudson trains, which run between New York City and New Jersey.

The strategy holds allure for mass transit authorities and advertisers. Notoriously short on funds, transit systems are always seeking new sources of revenue. The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority says the tunnel ads could generate nearly $1.5 million a year for the T. Meanwhile, advertisers are seeking new ways to reach the consumer amid a commercial deluge and the arrival of digital video recorders such as TiVo, which entirely sidestep messages from advertisers.

"Now that's a way to break through the clutter," said Tobe Berkovitz, an advertising professor and associate dean at Boston University's College of Communication. "Not only is the ad not competing with other ads, but whoever's first is bound to get a lot of attention."

Royal Caribbean is counting on it. The Miami cruise ship line transports about 2.3 million passengers a year to locales from the Bahamas to Hawaii. The timing for its Boston ad could hardly be better. The newest ship in its fleet, Jewel of the Seas, makes its US debut this fall in Boston and sets sail next fall from Boston directly to ports in Bermuda and the Caribbean.

Nearly 215,000 people ride the Red Line on a typical weekday, according to the MBTA.

Though only time will tell whether tunnel ads make money for advertisers and the T, advertising professionals said, they are certain to generate buzz. Most people haven't seen anything like it before. Unlike billboards or TV spots, the tunnel ad stands alone.

And the audience is captive.

"We think this will catch people so totally by surprise that when they see it, they can't help but watch it," said Dan Hanrahan, Royal Caribbean's senior vice president of marketing and sales.

The Royal Caribbean ad runs through September, after which another advertiser will take its place. The cruise line plans to return to the Red Line with another ad in November. Next month, yet another Red Line tunnel ad (the advertiser has yet to be disclosed) will appear between the Broadway and South Station stops.

MBTA officials said they're waiting to see how passengers receive the ads -- and how much money the ads make for the transit authority -- before they allow more tunnels to be used.

"If the pilot project is deemed a success, then tunnel advertising is likely to be expanded to other parts of the subway system," the MBTA said in a statement to the Globe.

Rob Walker, president of SideTrack, the Canadian company that in January won the contract to install the new advertising system and woo advertisers to the MBTA, said the company is bearing all the costs of installing the technology, including any tunnel repairs that need to be made. SideTrack paid an initial fee of $400,000 to the MBTA.

If the first year is a success, the pilot project becomes a 10-year commitment. The MBTA said that could translate into nearly $1.5 million annually in new revenue. The underground ads could show up in as many as a dozen locations along the Red Line route, Walker said.

That prospect irks some of the T's riders.

Rob Chodat, a Central Square resident, fears the ads might become irritating. "At first, I think it would be kind of a spectacle," he said. "But after seeing it a couple times, you might not want to put up with it anymore."

Grant, the Cambridge rider, has a different take on it. He'd rather see the MBTA raise money by advertising than by increasing fares.

"Let's face it," he said. "It's not the world's greatest subway system.

"Whatever the T can do to raise revenue and bring the system into the 21st century is great."

Naomi Aoki can be reached at naoki@globe.com.