Owning a car is expensive. Gas, insurance, and other miscellaneous car-related costs add up, and mean that in some cities it’s already cheaper to replace your car with ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft.
One startup, Wrapify, is trying to buck this trend by putting money back into the pocket of car owners. The 6 month old-old startup pairs drivers willing to wrap their car with companies looking for a unique way to advertise.
Here’s how it works:
Wrapify has a two-sided marketplace that lets drivers signup, decide the extent that their car will be wrapped (partial, full, etc.), and even choose which marketer they want to work with to wrap their car.
After accepting an ad campaign, drivers drop their car off for a free wrap, then get paid an average of $450 a month for the length of their contract.
Drivers use Wrapify’s smartphone app to track the length of their commute, and are paid per mile based on a variety of factors, including if the wrapped car was driving through a highly-populated area, or if it was sitting in traffic for a lengthy period of time (where it would get a lot of eyeballs).
The company has signed up over 10,000 drivers to date, and is seeing 100% month-over-month growth in the more than 10 U.S cities that Wrapify is live in. Brands already on the platform include eBay, Petco, and Harrah’s Resorts.
Interestingly, Wrapify provides its ad partners with a feature called Swarm, which lets advertisers send a push notification to drivers, offering them an extra bonus if they either park their cars or drive around a specified area for a period of time…essentially the equivalent of Uber’s Surge Pricing.
Of course other companies have tried creating similar advertising platforms, to little avail. However, Wrapify is resolute in telling naysayers that they are a technology company at heart, and are leveraging recent mobile technology innovations like live impression and geographic reach data to help make their platform work.
Wrapify has raised a $1M seed round from Ludlow Ventures, Social+Capital Partnership, Haystack, and The LAUNCH Fund, and is in the process of securing a Series A round of funding.