Ads on cars: how Ubiklan plans to be the Uber for offline advertising

Photo credit: Ubiklan.

Being stuck in traffic is the worst, especially when you live in a metropolis notorious for it. Ubiklan, a Jakarta-based startup is trying to take advantage of this situation by showing ads on cars along the commute.

Ubiklan offers businesses a more affordable option to advertise offline by wrapping their message on privately owned and rented cars. “Instead of using billboard advertising, which mostly incorporates large-scale brands and costs about US$20,000, Ubiklan advertises using independent drivers around the city for less than a fraction of the price,” Glorio Yulianto, CEO of Ubiklan tells Tech In Asia.

The name Ubiklan comes from the words “ubiquitous iklan”, which translates to advertising that aims to be present everywhere.

Origins

A pioneer of its kind, Ubiklan was established in 2016 by Glorio and Kalvin Handoko, the company’s current CTO. They were Indonesians living abroad who met as schoolmates in Taiwan.

Glorio says the company started as an idea of monetizing Jakarta’s traffic problem based on sharing economy principles.

“I want to connect people and small to medium companies – people who want to earn more money by giving up their private space for advertising and companies who want to market directly to their consumers by rendering ad space.”

“At first, I planned to go on vacation in Indonesia, but I ended up spending most of my time discussing the idea with my friends who work in startups like Go-Jek, MokaPOS, and Kurio and decided to move here and leave my job at HP in San Francisco,” he continues.

Glorio and Kalvin then left their jobs to build Ubiklan in Jakarta.

Ubiklan co-founders Kalvin Handoko (left) and Glorio Yulianto.

How the app works

Ubiklan was loosely inspired by Wrapify–an American startup with a similar idea. According to Glorio, the startup localizes the concept to Indonesian users by compensating partners in monthly payments and requiring drivers to travel a certain number of kilometers in order to maintain a solid level of reach.

Ubiklan takes about 15 percent from whatever amount a company spends in a campaign.

Six-digit seed round