Amid losses, Uber driven to become advertising network

Uber has announced the creation of an advertising division dedicated to helping brands "connect with consumers throughout the entire ride process." That's right. The entire ride. The rideshare giant announced the division alongside a new ad platform called Uber Journey Ads, which addresses the troubling lack of advertising …

[VoiceOfTruth]

Is nowhere safe?

-> sponsored emails

AKA junk email. I don't care about the small print of opting in to receive crap messages which I will not read anyway. I use plain text email and won't click on their tracking link.

If I pay for a ride I should have a little bit of peace. If I want to talk to the driver, that's my prerogative. I think it is time to call it a day and use less polite language for these people. Sh*t shovellers.

Side note about advertising: YouTube is hitting me on the head with Grammarly adverts again. I will not buy anything from any company that advertises so aggressively.

[Youngone]

Re: Is nowhere safe?

You don't understand, it is resulting in two to six times the brand-performance lift compared to other benchmarks. Two to six times!

Just think of the synergies they'll create with that globalised mindshare baby!

Anyway, it's right-shoring a low-risk high-yeild game plan.

[Anonymous Coward]

@VoiceOfTruth - Re: Is nowhere safe?

You must expect this everywhere, folks! This is easy money to improve their bottom line.

[桜沢墨]

Re: Is nowhere safe?

I bet if you put on the glasses from "they live," and took a look at a grammarly ad, it would have some plain text saying "Install our keylogger so we can harvest information."

[src]

Avertising

Advertising - the fifth horseman of the apocalypse.

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as it appears on the rider's app and I, as a driver, need not be involved, I couldn't care less.

[TheProf]

Ha ha no

If I can put up with your shitty music you can live with my shitty advert diarrhoea.

[Jimmy2Cows]

Re: I, as a driver, ... couldn't care less.

And who says Uber drivers don't care about their passengers?

[joe bixflics]

As long as it appears on the rider's app and I, as a driver, need not be involved, I couldn't care less. If Uber thinks I am going to manage some sort of advertising device for them they can put the 'opt-in' check-box right next to the one I never checked for Uber Eats.

[Kevin McMurtrie]

Poof, gone

Well, there goes the self-driving car. Google just wanted those to be the physical equivalent of their search engine. Investors wasted billions of dollars thinking the technology must be ready because Google said they were doing it. Uber can do it now and cheaper exploiting humans.

[Cuddles]

Re: Poof, gone

If Uber could do it cheaper, they wouldn't be losing billions every quarter. Uber only exists because investors keep wasting billions of dollars on it in the hope that at some point it will somehow discover a way to actually make a profit.

[Trigonoceps occipitalis]

Re: Poof, gone

Self Driving Car

In a few years when I get my Tesla "Autopilot" will be perfected. No doubt regulation will lag the real world and I will need to be ready to take back control (in a good way). Now, there is a large screen that could present adverts and, to make sure I am awake, require me to press the "OK" box occasionally.

You heard it here first and I am so, so sorry.

[Sleep deprived]

Taking a cab now involves a "ride process"

Everything else is an experience.

[Neil Barnes]

Oh good.

Another reason why I will never use Uber.

[Missing Semicolon]

Blade Runner

Is becoming ever more prophetic.

[Mike 137]

Re: Blade Runner

Long before Blade Runner there was The Tunnel Under the World [story Frederick Pohl (Galaxy, 01/1955); movie Out of the Unknown series 2 episode 8, (12/1966)].

We're heading there already.

[Roger Lipscombe]

Entire ride *process*

I'm pretty sure (or cynical enough to believe...) that the "entire ride process" is a superset of the "entire ride". You'll be getting adverts while booking the ride, while waiting for the ride (through obnoxious notifications on your phone that you can't ignore because, well, you're expecting a ride), doubly-so while in the car, and then probably some more adverts in between the car and submitting your feedback.

[Mishak]

"submitting your feedback"

How may people bother with that? Nearly every request I receive gets ignored (and some are very persistent).

I wonder what the "carbon footprint" of "would you like to leave feedback?" emails is...

[TeeCee]

...resulting in two to six times the brand-performance lift...

I'm not sure that: "make a mental note to never buy anything sold by those bastards" qualifies as a "lift".

Oh and if the ad is accompanied by the de rigeur "I bought autotune and I'm not afraid to use it" muzak, they're now running the risk of bricks through their windows too.

[Charlie Clark]

GDPR violation

As soon as they start to sell targeted advertising then they will need to get the victim's passenger's consent. I can see some class action on the back of this.

[dogcatcher]

Who Uber?

I have always assumed that Uber are an anti-trust conspiracy of minicab drivers. The last minicab I used to get to Heathrow, some 25 years ago, stank, even though the rear passenger window was missing. The driver neither spoke nor understood English, French or Arabic, and demanded a tip at the end of a hellish journey.

Uber's own advertising obviously doesn't work for I don't know which counties suffer their presence, and I have no desire to find out.

IMHO Advertising executives are less useful to society than minicab drivers.

[Matthew "The Worst Writer on the Internet" Saroff]

What New Hellscape is This?

facepalm