Uber has announced that it will start showing video ads to users across its various service apps, including Uber Eats and Drizly. The video ads will play while users wait for their taxi or food delivery and will also be displayed on tablets installed in some Uber vehicles.
“Uber offers advertisers a place to put long form video messaging along with engaging visuals in front of consumers as they transact throughout their journey,” reads the company’s news release. “With this latest announcement, these new formats give marketers the tools to tell creative stories, as well as boost brand awareness, lift and sales.”
According to Uber’s testing of ads in its apps, its ads outperformed the industry viewability benchmarks by 37 percent. The in-app ads are now live in the U.S. Mid-journey ads will roll out in the U.S. “over the coming weeks.”
Uber says that video ads are a way to monetize its large and engaged user base, and to offer advertisers a unique opportunity to target them based on their location, destination, and preferences. “We have two minutes of your attention. We know where you are, we know where you are going to, we know what you have eaten,” Uber executive Mark Grether said in a statement to The Wall Street Journal. “We can use all of that to then basically target a video ad towards you.” A truly dystopian statement, to say the least.
The video ads will be muted by default in all Uber apps, while users will need to manually mute the ads during rides.
The company will roll out its video ad products in the U.K., France and Australia later this year. There was no mention of the ads coming to Canada.
Read more about the development here.
Source: Uber, Via: The Wall Street Journal
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