The parking lot: it isn’t just for parking anymore.

In the latest example of advertisers turning space with no commercial value into something valuable, a company is manufacturing printed vinyl ads that cover the lines between spaces in parking lots. They’re unobtrusive from a distance but impossible to miss when standing over them.

The ads’ creator says they’re effective because most people in a retailer’s parking lot are there specifically to purchase something.

“Over 60 percent of all purchases are impulse in nature, and so if you can garner that last chance to communicate your message, you’re going to be a heck of a lot better off,” says Greg Gorman, founder of Parking Stripe Advertising.

Gorman, who developed the ubiquitous Budweiser “frogs” and “Clydesdale” campaigns, hatched the idea for his newest venture during a brainstorm session at his Denver-based marketing firm, Commotion LLC.

After challenging his employees to come up with new places to put ads, Gorman, 46, looked out of his office window and flippantly suggested the stripes on the parking lot. It took him a second or two to realize he’d just stumbled upon a potential moneymaker.

“I said, ‘Oh my God, this meeting’s over,'” he says.

Gorman immediately called his client 3M Co., a leader in traffic markings, to make sure the idea hadn’t been patented.

“Sheepishly, after three days of their patent attorneys calling to assure me they had done it, they had to come back and let me know that they’d never thought of this,” he says.

Ads on Parking Stripes are unobtrusive from a distance but impossible to miss when standing over them.

Since then, Gorman and his team have spent the last two years testing and researching their patented adhesive vinyl stripes.

“They’ll stand up to anything Mother Nature can throw at them, but they won’t stand up to a snow plow,” Gorman says of his stripes.

The ads debuted late last year in the parking lots of ten Home Depots in Austin, Texas, touting the company’s internal brands. Since then, grocery stores, malls, airports and school districts across the country have signed up to have the ads put in their parking lots.

Meanwhile, Ford, Halliburton, Pepsi, Qwest and Dell are among the companies now paying to have their brands mentioned on the stripes.

It’s a win-win situation for parking lot owners, Gorman says, because it makes them money and their lots look better.