Last Thursday, October 12, the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association held its annual MIMA Summit at the Hilton in downtown Minneapolis, and I joined a panel on the future of advertising.

The summit

MIMA calls the Summit the largest gathering of digital creatives, technologists, storytellers, advertisers, marketers and product strategists in the Midwest, and the room lived up to it: people from agencies, Fortune 500 brands, startups and creative studios, all in one place for a day.

Elizabeth Nyamayaro, the founder of HeForShe, opened the day, and Chuck Klosterman closed it with a talk that asked the audience to picture the far future. In between, three rounds of breakout sessions brought speakers from across Minnesota's marketing world, from U.S. Bank and Red Wing Shoe Company to Carmichael Lynch Relate, BBDO Minneapolis and the Minnesota Vikings.

It was a fitting place for a startup that sells media in cars. Minneapolis is where we chose to build Vugo, and the people in that room are the ones who decide where the next advertising dollar goes.

The case we brought

Ask where advertising is going, and the honest answer is: wherever people's attention goes next. It moved from newspapers to radio, to TV, to the web and to phones. We think the next move is into the car, and specifically into the back seat.

More and more trips are taken in cars someone else is driving, through Uber, Lyft and taxi apps today, and one day in cars that drive themselves. A passenger has time, and nothing they have to watch. That's a rare thing in media: an audience that isn't scrolling past you.

That's the space Vugo builds for. In rideshare cars, we put a screen in front of the back seat with free entertainment for riders and advertising mixed in. Drivers earn extra income from the advertising. Brands reach people on their way somewhere, matched to the context of where they are, in the cities they choose.

There's a bigger idea behind it, too. Advertising paid for much of the internet, and it can pay for more of the ride. Earlier this year, Fast Company asked whether ride-hail could be free by 2021, and we said yes. Whatever the date turns out to be, the direction is right: the better the experience in the back seat, the more of the fare it can carry.

Thank you, MIMA

Thank you to MIMA, its volunteers and everyone who came to the panel. Minnesota's marketing community has been good to Vugo since our first days here, and it was a pleasure to give something back.

If you're a brand or an agency thinking about where your audience will be next, read our guide to rideshare advertising, see how we made the case to carmakers in Detroit, or get in touch.