For everyone · 6 min read · Updated October 2026

Daytime Parking: Where Your Car Works While It's Parked

Most cars sit parked for most of the day. Here is why a Lunar sticker keeps working in an office lot, a school street or a driveway, and what it doesn't change.

A car on the road is only part of the story. A widely cited figure, traced to UCLA researcher Donald Shoup, says a typical car is parked about 95% of the time, so where it sits during the day matters as much as where it drives. A Lunar sticker is on the car door, so it is seen in an office lot at 10am, outside a school at 3pm and on a residential street at night. This guide explains how daytime parking fits into a Lunar campaign, for drivers who want to earn up to $500 a month on driving they already do, and for businesses deciding whether a parked car is worth paying for.

Why parking matters to a car ad

Out-of-home advertising is sold on estimated impressions, and a billboard earns its estimate while standing still. A car door works the same way when it is parked: anyone walking past reads it. The industry estimate Lunar uses is 70,000 impressions per car per day, the top of the published range for a wrapped vehicle (OAAA, via AdQuick and 4OVER4). It is a per-vehicle, per-day estimate for a car on the road, not a count of who looked at a parked one, so treat it as a planning figure rather than a promise of views.

The places a car spends its day

• Workplace lots and garages: eight or nine hours in front of the same colleagues, delivery drivers and visitors. Coworkers who see a local cafe or clinic on a neighbour's door every day come to know the name.
• Street parking near shops: a car parked on a busy local street is passed by far more people than one in a private driveway. That is a bonus, not something Lunar picks or tracks.
• School and daycare pickup lines: parents wait in the same spot every afternoon and read whatever is in front of them.
• Home streets and driveways: quieter, but they are the neighbourhoods where local services such as plumbers, tutors and groomers find customers.
• Gyms, campuses and park-and-ride lots: long, predictable stays among people who live nearby.

What Lunar does and does not know about parking

Lunar does not use GPS and does not track where a car goes or sits. A driver draws "Where you drive" circles during signup, a business sets target areas on a map, and Lunar's team offers matches by overlap between the two. That means nobody can promise that a particular car will be parked outside a particular street at a particular time, and an article that said so would be making it up. What a business can reasonably expect is a car that belongs to its area, driven in and parked around it, and a sticker that does not stop working when the engine is off.

What a driver still has to do

Parking does not replace driving. The sticker is paid per 30 days of verified driving, and every driver does one weekly check: a photo of every live sticker, one odometer reading, and at least 25 miles (40 km in Canada) driven since the last approved reading. The check opens Tuesday at 10:00 Pacific and is due Thursday at 10:00 Pacific. A missed week is a strike, and the third strike in a calendar month has real costs. So a car that lives in a garage and barely moves is not a fit; a car that does a normal commute and then sits in a lot all day is exactly the kind of driver Lunar is built for.

• Driving a normal week: the 25-mile minimum is a normal commute for most people.
• Parked in the daytime: fine. It is how most cars spend a workday.
• Rideshare cars are welcome, and so are cars used for errands only, as long as the weekly check passes.

What a business can take from this

Think of a Lunar car as a small moving poster that also stays put near where people work, shop and pick up their kids. Half Moon is $500 a month for 2 cars, an estimated 4,200,000 impressions a month and a CPM of about $0.12. Full Moon is $1,500 a month for 7 cars, about 14,700,000 estimated impressions a month and a CPM of about $0.10. The two plans differ only in cars and price. See pricing for the detail.

• A slot is only billed while a car is carrying your approved sticker, so an empty slot is never charged.
• Apart from the $50 deposit, nothing is charged until your first sticker is on a driver's car. The deposit counts toward the plan, or is refunded if no driver accepts within 7 days.
• Getting to a live sticker takes time: a match, printing, shipping, the driver's own install and an approved photo.
• Every sticker carries a small QR code. You choose where it sends people, and Lunar counts scans only.

Making a sticker work in a parking lot

• Big, simple and readable at a few metres: parked cars are read by people on foot, so a clear name and one line beats small print.
• Put the neighbourhood or the service on the sticker, not only a logo.
• Keep your listing, website or booking page ready for the scan that follows.
• Remember it is a circle on a door: one mark, high contrast.

Questions drivers ask

Can I park wherever I like? Yes. Lunar does not tell you where to park, and a sticker does not change parking rules. Check any building or lot's own rules, and read how the weekly check works before you sign up. Drivers pay no deposit and no fee and are never asked for money, and anything that asks you for money to start is not Lunar.