By Seb Joseph • December 19, 2024 •
Ivy Liu
For 2025, Uber Advertising is sticking with what works: scaling up markets, doubling down on programmatic and adding new formats, according to Paul Wright, its head of international advertising. No need to fix what isn’t broken — especially when the ride-hailing app turned ads business already humming along.
So much so that the business hit a 1 billion annual net revenue run rate earlier this summer.. That’s double its 2022 run rate of $500 million. An impressive milestone for an ad business that’s just two years old.
And the way things are going, more milestones are bound to fall in 2025.
Uber has deftly weathered what could’ve been a rocky transition following the departure of Mark Grether earlier this year, turning it into just another stepping stone in its growth story. The company used the period to tweak its ad operations, appointing dedicated GMs to lead distinct verticals: ride app, grocery advertising and the Uber eat restaurant and CPG ad business. To top it off, Uber brought in retail media veteran Kristi Argyilan as Grether’s successor setting the stage for even greater growth ahead,
Digiday caught up with Wright just days before Argyilan’s appointment to dive into how Uber Advertising plans to keep the momentum going in 2025.
What’s been key to the ads business success over the last two years?
The business has evolved in that we’re much clearer on what we’re doing and how we want to build it. As a result, we’re having more focused conversations, whether it’s about the retail side, our efforts in brand building or our work around understanding customer behavior. There’s more structure and intent behind everything we do.
In turn, we’re seeing more money come from across the funnel. One of the things we’re trying to figure out is how the brand works with performance on our platform. While we’re not necessarily unique in terms of our ability to help marketers reach people at all stages of their purchase journey, we do have a very broad ecosystem, across the funnel.
You mentioned that the business has changed. How?
Before Uber Advertising officially launched the ads business here was a sponsored listing product back in 2021. It was really about allowing merchants to have a choice as to whether they wanted to be higher up in the feed. Fast forward to 2022 when Mark Grether and his team launched Uber Advertising, which is when we launched ads in the Uber Ride’s app. From there we started thinking about how we were going to engage with the CPGs and FMCG advertisers – something we hadn’t done before. That gave us a foundation to then expand globally in a rapid way, from the U.K. to France to Australia that same year. Then in 2023 we focused on looking at what other markets to open up before expanding into markets like Japan, Taiwan and Spain a year later.
How will you build on that plan for 2025?
There are a few key areas in focus. First, we’re doubling down on measurement tools – giving advertisers deeper insights into our customer base remains a priority as we grow into a more sophisticated media business. Expanding into new markets is also on the radar, though nothing is set in stone. With operations already spanning 24 markets globally, we’ve got most of the major ones covered. Beyond that, we’ll keep pushing with format innovation and testing. More importantly, though, there’s a lot of growth in the core business that we need to focus on too.
Given the focus on measurement, will there be much done on understanding incrementality given so much of retail media tends to focus on ROAS?
Both are important actually. The focus often depends on the marketers’ objectives, how they measure ROI and what they’re selling. Looking ahead, we’re actively supporting the IAB’s push to establish standards for retail media measurement. That said, I believe we might need to develop measurement frameworks entirely. Traditional methods rooted in display media and legacy models may not fully capture today’s evolving marketing funnel.
Look at ours, for instance. Around 60% of Uber Eats users open the app without knowing what they want to order. In this scenario, ads act as a signpost of sorts, steering undecided customers toward a decision – something that’s quite different to a typical retail media setup where a customer is coming back to a retailer for their weekly shop. Ultimately, we have to collaborate with our advertisers to define what works best for them while balancing that with the broader industry standards.
So Uber Advertising will develop its own bespoke measurement solutions?
I wouldn’t say bespoke. Rather, we have to work out what the right solutions are for the environment. Now, that doesn’t necessarily have to be bespoke. In fact, it could be something that’s already used by other platforms. Of course, we want to work within the advertising community, but there are some things we don’t know yet about consumer behavior in these types of environments, which we need to study and understand better
How are brands starting to think more carefully about how they use Uber Advertising?
Earlier this year, we worked with Pizza Hut. On the Uber Rides app we created this game for the brand, which let people create their own pizza but using the Space Invaders game mechanics. It was a brand activation that linked through to Pizza Hut for customers to make an order. What we saw was several things: We drove a specific number of sales from the game itself. Moreover, the ROAS was very high. It was just a test but its an example of how brand and performance can work in tandem in our environments. For a lot of retail media propositions that’s hard to do.
What does that mean for the way you work with agencies?
While i can’t share specifics, it’s clear agencies are embracing us more. The data tells the story – they’re beginning to see the unique insights we bring to the table. After all, who can provide granular insights like how many people travel through a specific airport or attend a Taylor Swift concert at Wembley stadium.
Even so, we’re less focused on the total data that we have, and more about making sure we have the right data for any agency or client we’re working with. So far it seems to be paying off. Agencies are using our insights to drive impressive results for their clients. Just recently an agency contact told me about two brands they work with that were blown away by the outcomes from our partnership. Its rewarding to see that kind of impact.
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