For businesses · 6 min read · Updated October 2026

What Happens During the 4-Week Campaign Launch?

Match, print, ship, verify — the four steps between signing up and your stickers rolling through the neighbourhood, and why the ramp is a feature, not a delay.

Sign up for a Lunar campaign today and your brand is typically rolling through the neighbourhood about four weeks later. That gap isn't queue time — it's a pipeline: your campaign gets matched to real verified drivers in your zones, your stickers get printed and shipped, and every install gets photo-verified before a single impression is counted or billed. Businesses used to instant digital campaigns sometimes ask why physical takes a month; the honest answer is that everything making this medium trustworthy — real cars, real drivers, verified installs — happens in those weeks. Here's the launch, step by step, and what you should be doing during each one.

Step 1: Matching (the marketplace does its real work)

First, your campaign enters matching: Lunar's team pairs your zones with verified drivers who live and drive there. Two forces meet in the middle — drivers who named your business as one they'd like to carry are looked at first (the best kind of carrier: a genuine fan), and the pool fills the rest from qualified cars whose daily patterns cover your chosen neighbourhoods. Matching quality is why the ramp exists at all: a campaign slapped onto whatever car was idle would launch faster and deliver worse — wrong zones, indifferent carriers, unverifiable reach. Your job this week: nothing. Your zones and design were set at signup; the marketplace is doing the part you paid it for.

Step 2: Print and ship (your design becomes objects)

Your circle stickers are printed — automotive vinyl, sized for door panels, one design per campaign — and shipped to each matched driver with placement instructions. Physical production is the unglamorous middle of the timeline and the reason a design change after signup restarts the clock: reprints are real objects moving through real mail. If you're still finalizing creative, the guidance in what makes a good sticker design applies — simple mark, readable name, one message. Your job this week: resist the urge to redesign.

Step 3: Install and verify (the step that makes the medium honest)

Drivers apply the decals — a few minutes per door with the placement guide — and submit install photos. Verification reviews each one: right placement, full circle visible, correct campaign. Only a verified install activates a sticker, and every live sticker is photographed again in the weekly check for the life of the campaign, so 'active car' keeps meaning what it says. This is also when your dashboard starts populating: cars flip to active as their photos clear, one by one rather than all at once — a campaign coming online looks like a string of lights, not a switch.

Step 4: First verified miles (the meter starts honestly)

Active cars start submitting weekly odometer photos, approved miles accumulate, and estimated impressions begin computing from them — real driving, counted after the fact, never projected. Because the first odometer cycle takes a week to close, expect your dashboard's numbers to feel quiet in the first days after activation and then find their rhythm: that's the verification cadence, not a slow campaign. Billing follows the same honesty: you're billed monthly as the campaign runs, never pre-charged for the ramp — the four weeks of pipeline aren't on your invoice.

What to do during the ramp (the businesses that get the most out of it)

• Time it backwards from your season: the four weeks are why snow-removal companies sign in August and gyms in October — presence should land when your booking window opens, a calendar we've mapped in the seasonal playbook.
• Get your capture surfaces ready: the stickers build familiarity; your Google Business Profile, reviews, and booking page convert it. A ramp month spent sharpening those is a ramp month that pays twice.
• Set your attribution now: if a QR code or offer is part of the design, have the landing page live before the first car activates — and start asking new customers how they heard of you, so the baseline predates the campaign.
• Expect staggering, not a launch day: cars activate as their installs verify. Full coverage arrives over days; that's the string-of-lights pattern working normally.

The bottom line

Four weeks is what verified physical presence costs: matching that puts your brand on the right cars, printing that makes it real, and verification that makes every reported mile true. Digital launches faster and evaporates faster; this medium ramps like the thing it builds — familiarity. Sign up with your season in mind, spend the ramp sharpening your capture surfaces, and let the lights come on. Plans start at $500 a month, billed only once the campaign is actually running.