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% um 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. They're
interesting to see how it plays out.