About 20 UW-Madison students will be cruising around campus on a free Huffy this fall — the only catch is they'll also be peddling a product.

Free Bikes — a business started by Matt Lerner, a graduate of the UW-Madison School of Business — offers students a semester bike rental, lock and storage, and in exchange they ride around with an advertisement affixed to the bike's basket and between the frame.

Lerner calls it "advercycling."

"We're really looking for a way we could get advertisements in spaces that were either highly regulated or really targeted, which is college campuses," Lerner said.

The idea is the bikes are paid for by allowing interested companies to advertise on the bikes using it as a "mobile billboard," he said.

Currently the only advertisements will be those promoting Free Bikes, but Lerner hopes to have local and national businesses signed up soon.

"It's basically just going to be getting the idea of Free Bikes ingrained in the community," Lerner said of this semester's business.

Douglas McLeod, a UW-Madison journalism and mass communication professor, said advertising in unusual places is becoming more prevalent, especially on college campuses.

"You can't go into a college bathroom ... without seeing advertising on the bathroom stalls," he said.

McLeod said the bike ads, similar to car and bus wraps, can be influential because they're out near where people are purchasing the often inexpensive products advertised. They also tend to be most successful when the goal is to build awareness about a product, not necessarily change a person's buying behavior, he said.

Award-winning idea

The initial business idea of Free Bikes was developed by Lerner and fellow business student Stacy Knuth as part of the 2007 G. Steven Burrill Business Plan Competition, an annual business school event where the business idea won first place.

Lerner said he's capitalizing on two major trends: being "green" and getting something for free, plus it will appeal to college students who need a bike for a limited time.

"Everybody's trying to be a little kinder to Mother Earth," he said. And, "college students would love a free bike."

UW-Madison junior Mitch Kersten said he found Free Bikes while on craigslist looking for a replacement set of wheels after his old bike broke.

"I'm actually really excited," Kertsen said. "I live over by the Capitol ... (and a bike) will shave a good 20 minutes off my walk."

Kersten said he's not worried what businesses he might be peddling around campus.

"It doesn't really matter what I'm advertising for," he said.

Along with craigslist, Lerner's clients also found Free Bikes via Facebook. All students need is a valid credit card in case the bike is not returned and the most they would be charged is around $200, Lerner said.

Serial entrepreneur

Lerner, 22, lives in Philadelphia and calls himself a "serial entrepreneur," as Free Bikes is the fourth business he's launched. A team of four employees help him run Chili Peppers Collectibles, a Web-based business, and Consignable Collectable, an E-Bay drop-off store in Madison.

They've also been recruited to assemble and hand out bikes today and Friday in Madison.

Lerner used the $5,000 prize money from the Burrill competition to fund his two other businesses and get Free Bikes off the ground. So far he has invested between $6,000 and $7,000 in 20 Huffy Cruisers — what he describes as a "beach bike."

Free Bikes "is something I'd really like to scale ... at a national level," Lerner said. "This is going to be a testing ground to see what the kinks are, what we can do better."

Mobile advertising

Lerner isn't the first to find creative spaces for advertising. In 2006, two UW-Madison students sold ad space on their foreheads to help fund a trip around the world. Only a few businesses took them up on the offer of the temporary tattoos and they earned about $400 each.

And mobile advertising isn't necessarily new, either.

In July, the Madison City Council voted to allow up to 20 Metro Transit buses to be fully wrapped in an advertisement and an unlimited number can display a partial wrap that leaves some windows open.

Even some municipal police departments have considered NASCAR-style ads on squad cars.

Deborah Mitchell, senior lecturer of marketing for the UW-Madison School of Business, said placing ads on bicycles is part of a trend in how businesses are getting their messages and products to the public.

The more ways consumers find to avoid markets, such as Wisconsin's no-call list and skipping television commercials using TiVo, "the more aggressively markets hunt them down," she said.