This Week: Uber Changes Mind About On-Car Advertising?

Welcome back to this week in rideshare news! RSG contributor Cecily covers how Uber drivers are worried about a new feature, & other news.

Hey, what’s up? It’s Cecily, and it’s this week in Rideshare News. For years, Uber discouraged drivers from partnering with digital advertising companies only to do it themselves. Well, well. This week Uber joined Adomni to introduce advertising displays on top of 1,000 cars. It makes no sense to me because it was only a few years ago when companies like Rapify, Carverse and Halo offered opportunities to drivers where drivers could make anywhere from $300 a month and up, and Uber didn’t like that. They were not a fan of that. Some, some, some people actually believe that they were deactivated because of that. There’s one driver who complained about being deactivated. He had spoke to an Uber rep. When the media got in touch with Uber, this is what they said.

“It’s Uber’s goal to make the rider experience as smooth and comfortable as possible. We don’t believe that the in-ride advertising enhances the right experience, and we discourage driver partners from working with third party in-ride advertisers such as Viewswagen”, the only one at the time. “Also, it is important to note that Uber is not affiliated with any in-ride advertising company in any way, and we are not providing information about our riders or drivers. That said, this Uber representative was mistaken, and these actions haven’t resulted in a driver partner deactivation.”

One thing I also looked up was the vehicle requirements, and this is how that reads. It says that, vehicles cannot have any cosmetic damage, which is fine, missing pieces or commercial or branding taxi paint jobs. With that said, Uber is in violation of their own rules.

The display ad is a double sided screen that’s installed on top of the car. It shows ads based on location and time of day. This pilot program will pay drivers $300 a month. You will also get $100 for every week you drive more than 20 hours with the thing on. The program is set to roll out in Atlanta in Georgia, Dallas, Texas, and Phoenix, Arizona by April 1st.

Now, could Uber be trying to become profitable by allowing companies to serve ads? Now, when I did my research on all these companies that do that, and there’s plenty of them, people stated that the opportunity to make $300 a month is attractive to a lot of drivers and that’s why people all want to do it, but how much money would they actually make off of you and everyone if everyone had an advertising thing on their car? They’d make a lot. Now, my hopes are with all these advertising platforms already out there, that the battle for your business is extremely high, which means that the pay should be comparable. There are at least four or five companies in this space. I’m going to list them in the description for external and internal. If this is something that you’re interested in, you can look into those companies and figure out what the best route is for you.

I’m very happy to report that that racist encounter that was caught on tape has led to redemption and closure. I don’t know if you guys remember this, but last month a driver, Randy Clark, had a dispute with former CEO Hans Berglund. The two argued by about the front seat and after that Berglund called Clark the “N” word. Now, Berglund was forced out of the company that he created and both men say that they received an enormous amount of flack from internet trolls and the like.

Berglund said, this encounter ruined his life and his business and Clark said he wasn’t spirit any scrutiny either on his end. The two met up with their attorneys in doe and Clark said that he received Berglund’s apology and believes that he will do good in the future. Do good in the future? I guess that means he’s not going to curse anybody out or call them out their name. I’m happy to see that they resolved this and it does suck that Berglund got fired over this, but there’s a huge lesson here. No means no.

I’d like to call the segment Your Car, Your Rules. Things people say when they’re justifying why they stopped the trip without any explanation needed. But in this case, I’m going to explain it to you so you know what’s going on. An Uber driver says that he booted three passengers from his car because one of them just would not stop passing gas. Driver Jose Peralta picked up three men outside of a strip club last Sunday. Driver said that one passenger passed gas a couple of times and he actually confronted him. Another passenger became irate and started calling him racist names.

The guy farts one time. He farts and you’re not going to drive me home.

He farted three times.

Who gives a ****?

Jose said that he told the men to get out of the car and they wouldn’t do it.

Peralta says one passenger started to get very agitated, so we pulled into this plaza to end the ride. According to Uber, all drivers have the right to end the trip at any time if they feel uncomfortable, but that didn’t go over well with the angry passenger.

You’re not going to drive me ******* home.

You don’t have to be-

How ****** stupid are you?

Peralta says he feared for his safety.

There was like three of them, and I’m there by myself. I don’t know what they going to do.

The passenger refusing to leave.

You even allowed in Canada, you ****?

I don’t have to put up with the abuse and the racial stuff is what really bothered me.

Let’s just turn this into, what would you do? I think that if someone kept passing gas, especially if it was loud, obnoxious and smelly, that I would say something. You’ve got to be ready for the fallout though. I don’t know how that would work, especially if you’ve got three guys in the car and they went to a strip club and maybe they drank and maybe they’re a little rowdy. It’s 2:00 AM. If I was even out at that late driving, I probably would just see how far I could go without saying anything, or literally just pull over, stop and say, I stopped the trip and run. I don’t know. It’s just so far fetched. I don’t even know what I would do, but I think that Jose did the right thing. I definitely think Jose did the right thing in staying in the car and standing his ground and refusing to breathe in polluted air. Like go, Jose. Let me know what you would do in this case.

If you liked this video, give me a thumbs up. If you are curious about who I am and what I do, my name is Cecily and I have a channel called Drive, Girl Drive. I need some batteries for this thing. You can also follow me on Facebook. Feel free to message me if you have any news or tips or anything like that, and with that said, have a wonderful weekend. You can see me every Saturday, 5:00 AM. You don’t have to get up that early to see it. It’ll be waiting for you when you get up. Have a great weekend and make lots of money. Be safe. Bye.