An Analysis of 2023’s Can’t-Miss Ad Opportunity

Rideshare advertising is an emerging channel that leverages tablets inside rideshare vehicles to present interactive video experiences to riders. These experiences are powered by brands and represent one of the fastest-growing and most-engaging opportunities for marketers looking to cut through the digital noise in other environments.

Rideshare advertising helps brands reach a captive audience and create interactive experiences that consumers enjoy. That’s why we see so many new players getting into this space: It’s an opportunity to revolutionize the in-car experience through branded games, surveys, interactive video ads, and more.

T-Mobile Advertising Solutions, which provides the world’s largest network of active rideshare media screens, recently tapped into its unique data and insights to reveal how brands can best leverage this growing digital-out-of-home (DOOH) channel to reach their ideal audiences.

Here are a few highlights of what we uncovered when building our 2023 annual report on U.S. rideshare media and advertising:

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Young, Wealthy, and Always Connected

The typical rideshare rider is relatively young, high-earning, and tech-savvy. According to our 2023 Rideshare Persona Survey:

• The vast majority of riders are between the ages of 18 and 49.
• Our riders were 46% male, 44% female, and 10% non-binary/other.
• Their average income is $131,000.
• The most common rides are for social outings, going to/from work, and leisure travel.
• Seventy-five percent are iPhone users, and 25 percent are Android users.
• Forty-four percent of riders say they use rideshares three or more times per month.

Engagements That Matter

As an advertising vehicle, rideshare screens aim to inform and delight riders while giving them control over their experiences. Casual games, such as those presented through our Game Zone offering, form the core of rideshare original content. In addition to Game Zone, these screens offer a variety of branded and unbranded experiences.

Here’s what we learned when we looked at how riders engage with rideshare screens:

Our rideshare screens saw 620 million total engagements in 2022 — this included 24 million ad engagements.
Friday, Saturday, and Sunday see the highest engagement plus the highest trivia scores, as riders are more likely to be traveling in social groups.

• In 2022, our Game Zone offering led to about $100,000 in rider prize payouts.
• 7 million riders tapped the screen to check the weather in 2022.
• Our Wordle tribute had an engagement rate of 5 percent.
• 139,000 Flowcodes (i.e., QR codes) were scanned on our tablets in 2022.

With a reach of more than 20 million monthly riders driving more than 500 million monthly impressions, T-Mobile Advertising Solutions’ rideshare network is a crucial component of a successful DOOH campaign, as well as a valuable tool for drivers to provide a positive experience for riders. Advertisers enjoy an engaged, captive audience playing on the largest screen in the “room” and can tap into a variety of custom-built branded experiences, as well as more traditional video and display ad units. In 2022, our in-house studio created 150 custom experiences, with 90 of those created in collaboration with top brands.

Rideshare advertising reaches an attractive demographic that is often difficult to reach through traditional channels, and it does so in a memorable, engaging way. Will it be part of your next media buy?

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