• by Laurie Sullivan , Yesterday

Uber Advertising announced an interactive advertising format that combines branded map displays with destination-specific creative that runs during the consumer’s entire ride.

Following the map to make the ride interactive is part of a new offering from Uber called Journey Takeover, which gives advertisers the ability to create stories and complete brand experiences that include ads.

The ads appear on the tablet in cars, in the Uber app, and now in the map that many people watch as the car takes them from one destination to another. It gives advertisers real-time contextual targeting and the ability to capture consumer attention for the duration of a ride, which averages roughly 20 minutes, according to past data from the company.

Journey Takeover was created by Uber Advertising’s Creative Studio, and launched with longtime ad partner, The Coca-Cola Company.

The partnership shows how brands can serve riders with market-specific contextually relevant creative when traveling to restaurants, sporting events, or grocery stores. It can function as a performance-based ad by embedding ride discounts or coupons for items sold by the brand advertiser. It's also accountable and trackable.  

Journey Ads feature an average global view time of over 100 seconds, explained Kristi Argyilan, global head of Uber Advertising.

Coca-Cola Company has worked with Uber Advertising for years. This format operates a bit differently than Uber’s previous ad platforms. It integrates three features that combine to unfold like a story and become interactive. The map interfaces displays brand images across Uber's navigation interface, animated brand icons move with the route during transit, and Journey Ads video units appear at specific stages during the trip.

In November, Uber Advertising reported that its video ads generated 41% higher than mobile video benchmarks, and in-ride videos about 11% higher than average.

During the holidays riders saw Coca-Cola delivery vehicles navigating Uber’s map as custom creative icons were developed specifically with each market in mind, including a Coca-Cola Christmas caravan in the United States, Spain and Portugal; a Coca-Cola branded Kombi van in Australia and New Zealand; and Santa’s sleigh in Mexico. 

Journey Takeover runs today as limited campaigns by market, including the U.S., Canada, UK and Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Taiwan, Mexico, and Brazil.