- Lyft's app will now feature ads when a user is booking a ride and during the trip.
- Its main competitor, Uber, launched video ads on several of its apps back in June.
The next time you take a ride with Lyft, you may notice some new targeted ads.
Lyft's app will now show ads as a user waits to be matched with a driver, waits to be picked up, and during their trip, the company announced in a blog post Thursday.
The ads are a way for the company to capitalize on its user base, as the average rider checks their phone nearly nine times during a ride, the company said.
"Lyft has a captive audience throughout their entire ride journey - waiting for their car, matching with their driver, and in ride - and brands can now reach riders in relevant and tailored ways across our suite of Lyft Media products," Zach Greenberger, Lyft's chief business officer, said in the company's blog post.
Greenberger told The Wall Street Journal that he expects advertisers to be sold on Lyft's potential due to how frequently riders check the app, as well as the data the ride-share company collects from its users.
Advertisers can target riders based on the location of the ride, as well as the user's method of payment, ride history, and lifestyle, Lyft's website says. "Lifestyle" is based on locations users "like to visit such as sports games, restaurants, gyms, etc," a spokesperson for Lyft told Insider in an email.
In its blog post Thursday, Lyft gave the example of riders potentially receiving ads for a new film if they're dropped off near a movie theater.
All riders will see ads on the app, but they have the option to reject sharing "their behavioral and demographic data," the Lyft spokesperson said. Greenberger told the Journal that the data will be reported anonymously and in aggregate.
Greenberger told the Journal that Lyft also intends on incorporating video ads on its app before year's end.
In June, ride-share giant Uber launched a similar ad rollout across its platforms. The company, which is Lyft's primary competition in the space, began featuring full-length video ads on its ride-share app, as well as its Uber Eats and Drizly platforms.
Like with Lyft, Uber's surplus of user data was cited by the company as a major draw for advertisers.
"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's advertising VP Mark Grether told the Journal in June. "We can use all of that to then basically target a video ad towards you."
Lyft's introduction of a new revenue stream comes after a few rounds of layoffs at the company. In November 2022, Lyft cut about 700 jobs, and then in April, it nixed another 1,200,