Are TfL’s cycling promotion campaigns worth the money?

From the Dutch government’s Bicycle Master Plan (1999):

The Dutch citizen knows what a bicycle is and how to use it. The promotion of bicycle use does not require billboards, but instead adequate, suitable facilities.

(via the ever-fiery Crap Cycling in Waltham Forest blog)

After questions to the Mayor from Richard Tracey AM, we learn that Transport for London spent £341,000 on a recent campaign to promote cycling including series of five YouTube videos and a cinema advertisement.

The film production costs were £224,400, including paying Big Brother presenter Dermot O’Leary and Edith Bowman (who she?) £5,000 each for a day’s filming – nice work if you can get it! TfL paid a further £141,000 to have the 90 second advert screened in more than 800 cinemas over a six week period in the late summer.

With impressive precision, TfL say that that 2,880,825 people saw the advert. But I wonder how many of them didn’t know what a bicycle is, or how to use it.