and let's talk ride sharing because lift stepping up its competition against Uber
launching its own business unit focused on
advertising and ad sales called lift media
riders and drivers alike can expect some changes as new advertising
methods are introduced but can lift keep up with the competition
and actually boost sales.
So I want to bring back my special co host this hour, Michele Castelli, oh
I'm Michelle, What do we know so far about these media plans to lift?
We'll lift is seeing a valuable opportunity and the
fact that it has this real estate that it
can get in front of consumers who are so
easily distracted by so many different things these days.
So you're probably gonna see advertising on a few different spaces.
So first is on top of lift cars.
So lift acquired this company called Halo Cars,
which was a roof advertising startup back in 2019.
They're gonna start selling that inventory a little bit
more regularly and really boosting their advertising there.
You're also gonna see things like lift tablets,
you might have already seen these in some cars.
I know they did a test in the Los Angeles market as well as
see more advertising around the bike services That lift runs in new york city,
they help run um,
Citi bike in Chicago, I think they helped run a company called um
uh, divvy and bay wheels in san Francisco nice ride in Minneapolis.
They have the largest bike rental sharing service in
the country by the number of stations they run,
which is over 3000.
They see advertising opportunities there and of
course something that they're calling lift skins,
that's when you open the app and you see maybe
some special custom graphics or a special custom offering.
There's a lot of real estate for lift to offer advertising
and now they want to turn that into a viable business.
Right? So it is interesting.
Uber has a similar advertising division, it's had it for a few years.
How is that fair for Uber?
Well,
in a recent earnings call Uber said they believe their advertising division
could hit as much as $1 billion in sales by 2024.
So it is a lucrative side business that they can offer as well as you know,
it's a little bit of a way to get into a sePA business.
You know how much I'm very interested when companies
can diversify revenue streams and so lift is seeing,
they have this opportunity,
they can add that advertising kind of similar to out
of home advertising which has been increasing as people go
out more and are wanting to see things in the
real world after being cooped up during the pandemic.
So it's been good for business for Uber.
And now lift is getting in on the game,
although they are a little bit behind from their competitor.
I think everyone is inundated our screens these days,
whether it's just out and about in the world on their phones elsewhere.
I wonder if people are starting to get sick,
maybe have so much advertising Michelle, do you think that they'll be okay?
People will be okay seeing ads in their ride share cars to, you know,
this is really interesting and I actually spoke to lift this morning about
that because that was the first thing that came in my mind.
Like we already have so many ads in front of us.
How can they stand out in this ready crowded marketplace? And what they did said is
they did do a big test with lift advertising in the Los Angeles
market with the lift tablets and one Thing they found was the cost,
the cost per acquisition was actually 60% lower
than leading social media platforms in 2022.
Now, as for those tablets,
about one out of four riders actually interacted with them and
98% of the riders rated their experience as positive or neutral,
which is pretty impressive.
And what's more having the tablets in those cars lead
to 28% more of those people tipping than average.
So they said not only was it improving the experience of the writer,
it also led them to be so much happier that they were
willing to tip more than they might have done in the past.
So they think it's a win win and they do think
that it's going to be a positive overall for everyone interesting.
Okay,
so also interesting here is that this announcement of ad spend coming
as advertisers in general are pulling back on spending because of inflation
concerns about a potential recession, simply a slowdown in the economy. That's
definitely the case. Is it a good time for live to launch this business?
Well, as I said, I spoke to lift earlier this morning and their head of their media,
their general manager of their media division and
what he said was they do feel that transportation
in general is a business that is going to
continue whether or not there are inflationary issues.
So kinsella said that um he also believes that they're confident that
their products and network will continue
to prove themselves attractive to advertisers.
They do see a long runway for this in the future.
Now looking at the rideshare competition in general,
I had insider pull some numbers,
lift is still pretty much up there and they do see these services continuing to grow.
Um If you think about the number of people who are using rideshare in a general basis,
although it isn't it growing at about it's about 29%
will be about 29% by 2020 for um it's gonna go up
slightly but we are seeing that more people are using rideshare.
So this is a great way for advertisers to get in front of audiences.
Um I think if they do it carefully and they don't inundate the writer that much,
they could find some valuable revenue streams there,
see how it plays out