For everyone · 5 min read · Updated August 2026

How Lunar matches drivers with local businesses

Two spots you pick, two Lunar fills, zones matched by radius, and a monthly veto. Exactly how drivers and local brands get paired — and why no car carries the same business twice.

Lunar's matching answers one question from both sides at once: which brand goes on which car? The short version — a driver names brands they'd genuinely back, up to two of their four door spots are filled from those picks, Lunar assigns the rest from the paying pool, and geography decides everything else: a driver's declared zone has to overlap the business's target area. Add a monthly veto for drivers and a no-duplicates rule per car, and that's the whole machine. Here's how each piece works and why it's built that way.

The inventory: one car, four spots

Every car on Lunar carries up to four circle stickers — front and rear doors, both sides, no hood. Drivers choose how many of the four spots to fill (one to four, no minimum), and each spot holds a different business: never two stickers of the same brand on one car. For a business, 'five cars' means your sticker on five different vehicles, spreading your presence across five different daily routines rather than concentrating it on one.

Step one: the driver picks brands to back

At onboarding, drivers name businesses they'd be glad to represent. Where availability allows, up to two of their spots are filled from those picks or close matches. This 'warm intent' layer is deliberate: a sticker someone chose is an endorsement, not just ad space, and it's why a Lunar car reads differently to neighbours than a wrapped taxi. Businesses can lean into it — inviting your own customers to sign up as drivers is the cheapest brand advocacy there is, and it's covered in what a Lunar sticker looks like on a real car.

Step two: geography does the heavy lifting

Each driver sets a driving zone — a point and radius covering where they actually live and drive. Each business sets a target zone the same way. Matches only happen where the two overlap, which is the entire point of hyper-local advertising: a coffee shop in East Vancouver gets cars that drive East Vancouver, not a car an hour away in Surrey. The overlap rule holds in both live markets, Vancouver and Tulsa, and it's what makes the impressions estimate meaningful — miles driven in-zone are worth more to a local brand than miles anywhere else.

Step three: Lunar fills the rest from the paying pool

The remaining spots are assigned from businesses with active campaigns in overlapping zones. This is the fairness layer: every paying advertiser gets cars, including the dry cleaner nobody thought to pick. Assignment respects the no-duplicate rule and campaign phases — each sticker runs a 3-month phase matching the business's committed term, so brands get continuity instead of churn.

The veto: drivers keep a say

• Every driver gets one veto per month on an assigned brand they don't want to carry.
• Veto it, and Lunar swaps that business onto another car — the campaign keeps running, just elsewhere.
• Start to veto, and there's a one-time +5% offer to keep the sticker instead (not loopable — it's an honest nudge, not a game).
• Content rules sit above all of it: nothing lewd or provocative goes on anyone's car in the first place.

The veto matters because willing carriers are better carriers — a driver who resents a sticker takes worse care of it, parks it in the garage, and quits sooner. Letting drivers curate keeps the whole marketplace honest.

What happens when things change

Matching isn't static. A driver leaves mid-phase? The brand returns to the pool and is re-placed on another car, and the business is credited for any gap so it gets the months it paid for. A campaign ends? The spot opens for the next advertiser in the zone. A driver's sticker gets damaged? Reprint, reship, re-verify. Renewal prompts fire about a week before each phase ends on both sides, so continuing is a tap, not a renegotiation.

Why this design beats an open marketplace

Pure driver choice would leave unpicked businesses with no cars; pure assignment would put brands on resentful drivers. The two-plus-two split takes the best of both: enough choice that every car carries some genuine preference, enough assignment that every advertiser gets guaranteed coverage. And because verification — VIN, install photos, weekly odometers — sits underneath it all, both sides can trust that a match on paper is a real sticker on a real car, actually driving the neighbourhood it was matched to.