‘It’s not for the faint of heart’: How Uber is scaling its billion-dollar ad business

Megan Ramm was working at Snap in 2022 when she received a simple message from a good friend who was at Uber Advertising: “Come build with us.”

Two years later, Ramm — now Uber Advertising’s global head of sales — and the Uber Advertising team built a billion-dollar business that’s continued to grow. By May 2025, its annual revenue run rate increased to $1.5 billion, up 60% year over year.

In short time, Uber has become a top-tier commerce media network. Of course, now it’s eyeing the next phase of growth, which has included integrating Uber Eats into ChatGPT.

But the skeleton key to the success so far has been the incredible amount of proprietary data signals and audience segmentation that Uber offers, powered by 13.2 billion trips a year.

“What is so appealing about Uber being in [40-plus countries] and serving over 180 million users is that this data set gives you the soul of the consumer,” Edwin Wong, Uber’s head of measurement sciences, told The Current.

Data is the differentiator

Wong was quick to say that while Uber’s signals don’t fully capture a person’s entire essence, they do nail what people are buying and where they’re going in real time.

This is where Uber differentiates itself from so many other media networks: It’s a utility rooted in what people are doing, where they’re going, what they’re most likely to do next — and how brands can fit in to fill their needs in the moment.

Whether that’s a pizza coupon on the way home from a bar, discounted soup to go along with sick-day essentials or a trailer for the new season of your favorite show after a long travel day, Uber’s ad philosophy centers around being a positive addition to the customer’s journey.

“One billion dollar-plus is impressive, but the real story is the quality of the signals tied to real-world intent,” Attain’s head of revenue, Vlad Strelsov, told The Current.

‘Not for the faint of heart’: Building Uber Advertising

Ramm admits that there’s a healthy tension in staying additive to Uber’s core global business as well as serving customers in the best way.

“That tension actually creates a healthy collaboration,” Ramm said. “It forces discussions about merchants and the quality of the platform that we’re delivering. And ultimately, I think it makes both tides rise. So it’s natural, but it’s something that we’re balancing every day.”

Jess Shuraleff, head of U.S. and Canada sales at Uber Advertising, got a lot more raw. She wrote on LinkedIn that joining the team this year has been one of the most exciting yet hardest challenges of her career.

“There have been moments I’ve cried in conference rooms,” Shuraleff wrote. “Times I’ve asked myself, ‘Why did I say yes to this?’ Because let’s be real — building something from the ground up, within the walls of a much bigger business, is complex, emotional and often overwhelming.”

Major companies launching commerce media networks has been one of the biggest trends in the advertising space in recent years, with nontraditional companies like PayPal, United Airlines, DoorDash, American Express and Mastercard all launching their own ad businesses.

Kristi Argyilan, Uber’s global head of advertising — known as the “godmother of retail media” for launching Target’s and Albertsons’ retail media networks — said earlier this year in an interview with The Current that launching a media network takes a company’s full buy-in.

“It’s not for the faint of heart,” Argyilan said. “You have to be willing to invest. It’s not a side hustle. You need to either invest or you need to decide who would be the right partners to outsource it to.”

Focusing on measurement to prove outcomes

Uber drives incremental sales for some of the biggest brands in the world, from Coca-Cola to Pepsi, McDonald’s, Molson Coors and Ulta Beauty. Because of that, it’s zeroed in on measurement this year.

The ride-hailing and delivery giant works with over 20 measurement partners, adding at least six this year, including Comscore, VideoAmp, Kochava and Adelaide. While Uber has full closed-loop measurement and attribution, it’s aiming to build trust with advertisers with these moves.

“If you’re asking the market to trust your environment, you need to be able to prove that exposure in your environment drives real business outcomes,” Attain’s Strelsov said. “Supporting independent third-party validation for sure accelerates budget as it removes the ‘self-grading’ skepticism.”

What’s next: Competing with Netflix and partnering with ChatGPT

Uber’s ad business was first built on sponsored listings and is now starting to branch out with ads on 50,000 tablet screens in the back of Ubers. Video ads and programming from The Weather Channel and Time Out are shown, leading to big results.

Wong says JourneyTV ads perform 11% better than online video in attention, and post-checkout ad formats for Journey score 40% higher.

A study from Lumen this year found that ads on Uber generate 6.6 times higher attention than online video, social and mobile display.

Could the shift to screens pit Uber against a new set of potential competitors, including streaming platforms like Netflix? Ramm thinks so. “We do compete with some of those premium players because of the experience,” Ramm said. “And for brand safety, we’re in a luxury position there. We’re not in the feed.”

As Uber scales the ads business globally, it’s focusing on interoperability to make ad buying as seamless as possible, as well as an increased number of partnerships, including with ChatGPT owner OpenAI and OpenTable.

“Business outcomes are the crux of customer adoption,” Ramm said. “And we’re laser-focused on planning around their objectives in order to grow their business.”