Car sharing and rental company Free2Move rolled out a new advertising unit in Germany recently where they placed ad screens on the rear side windows of their cars.

On-car advertising is by no means new. For decades cabs around the world have had advertising boards or brackets installed on their trunk or the roof as a way to increase revenue. Brands have also deployed cars or other vehicles to promote their products during campaign periods, and racing cars have always sold advertising or brand placements as part of sponsorship packages.

These days even private car owners can also partner with certain advertising companies to place stickers or wraps on most parts of their cars to earn money as they drive around the city, so there’s nothing surprising or novel about placing ads on cars.

However, Free2Move, which is a Stellantis subsidiary, decided that it’s a good idea to place advertising screens on the rear windows instead of stickers or wraps. According to Reddit users, these displays don’t activate unless the car is parked or stationary, most likely to avoid breaking local laws on car safety.

It’s not difficult to imagine the thought process that went into creating this ad unit. A screen takes away the need to take the car to the shop to place or replace stickers or wraps as necessary. Depending on how the technology works, they may be able to program the ads and deploy them at will or as part of a schedule, or they can update them over the air. Any typos or errors on the ad which may escape QA stage may be fixed much more easily that printed ads.

However, screen-based ads are much more distracting, and therefore less safe. When they’re only deployed when the car is stationary, it’s much less effective than having a wrapped car drive around town because far fewer people would see the ad on the the car when they’re parked versus when they’re on the move. The ad product may be novel or innovative but the effectiveness is certainly up in the air.

Speaking of up in the air, just the other day I posted about Indonesian airlines putting up ads on the overhead compartment panels on their planes. This is not new, they’ve been doing this for so long, maybe a decade or more, and they’re not the only airlines that do this.

These ads are certainly eyesores but they do take advantage of a captive market. What are you gonna do on an airplane, not look around? I’d argue that these ads are much more effective than the window screens on Free2Move, at least when it comes to creating awareness and imprinting the brand and product on people’s minds.

Some people don’t like ads because they can be intrusive and pervasive, not to mention distracting, which they certainly are when they’re on LED panels. However, it’s nigh impossible to avoid or ignore them and in many cases ads can be informative. People love ads that entertain, that are inspirational, and they equally hate intrusive and incessant ones.

These car window ads, in my opinion, because they supposedly don’t run when the car is moving, more likely serves little purpose, even as a tech demo, because ads are all about return on investment and for advertisers, I can’t imagine the return being worth the cost or effort compared to more conventional placements.