Ads are coming to some Lyft rides

Your Lyft ride could be getting another passenger soon, whether you decide to carpool or not. According to a blog post published Monday, the ridesharing company has created a business unit called Lyft Media that’ll be introducing in-car tablets allowing riders to track their routes, tip and rate drivers, control the music – and, of course, view ads.

🚗📺 More deets… Lyft has been testing the service in Los Angeles in recent months, and expects to offer it across 25% of all rides in LA, Chicago, San Francisco, and D.C. by the end of this year.

Beyond the in-car tablets, the company also plans to offer location- and time-targeted digital ads on top of cars, as well as on digital display panels at bike-share stations in large cities like NYC and San Francisco.

• A portion of the overall ad revenue tied to cars will go to its drivers, but the company declined to reveal how much.

📸 Zoom out: Lyft’s new media venture comes three years after Uber first started selling ads through its Eats app, and later began offering ads within its primary ride-hailing app and ​​atop drivers’ cars. Mark Grether, general manager of Uber advertising, said earlier this year that the company’s ad business could reach $1 billion in revenue by 2024.