The advertising industry's latest vehicles may soon be passing you on Main Street and parking outside your neighbor's house at night. Several California-based companies are paying drivers to wrap their personal cars in ads touting products like ice cream, juice bars and Internet services. Drive to and from work, pick up the kids, run errands and be willing to be a traveling billboard.
Critics call it another example of creeping and creepy commercialism.
He has matched advertisers with about two dozen drivers in California and plans to branch out to other major markets. The company has ads printed on adhesive vinyl that is applied to a car from bumper to bumper. Take Linda Morrison's yellow 1999 Volkswagen Beetle, for example. It's been wrapped since mid-April in advertising for Mobile Engines, a San Jose, Calif., company that provides services like movie schedules and reviews for customers of wireless Web devices. The money she gets for having her car wear the ad covers her monthly auto loan payments.