When Alex Ewing was a child growing up in Purcell, Oklahoma, he knew how close he was to home based on the billboards he saw outside his automobile window. Now, as CEO of OneScreen.ai, he helps startups like fintech Ramp and tech recruiter Karat advertise on billboards and more.
“I think billboards are cool and help bring creativity back into marketing,” Ewing told TechCrunch. “They are like a canvas for marketers in a way that a digital screen is not.”
Ewing joined Boston-based OneScreen last 12 months. The company acts as a software-based intermediary between startups and out-of-home (OOH) promoting spaces akin to billboards, subway ads, and more. OneScreen helps startups find the right placement for their ads based on the potential customers corporations want to succeed in, combined with demographic and historical data on the platform. The company also uses anonymous location data to assist corporations track the performance of their campaigns.
OneScreen has raised $4.7 million from investors including Asymmetric Capital Partners, Techstars and Impellent Ventures, among others. The company is currently profitable and tripled its revenue last 12 months.
Billboards and other varieties of OOH marketing are becoming more and more fashionable, especially among startups, Ewing said. OOH promoting spending in the US is expected to succeed in $9.3 billion this 12 months, in keeping with Statistaand is expected to succeed in almost $12 billion by 2029.
But why would a B2B company like Ramp wish to advertise in a classic consumer way, akin to on the outside of city buses or in subway cars?
Ewing said that after years of focusing on digital marketing, corporations are trying to return attention to OOH promoting strategies. He added that privacy and targeted promoting regulations and digital ad blocking capabilities have made internet advertising strategies less effective for many.
“B2B, B2C, companies around the world, from series A, series B, [companies that are] really well-financed or publicly traded companies said, ‘We can’t invest what we’ve been investing in digital anymore because there’s no return on investment,'” Ewing said. “This solution is becoming more and more expensive and less and less effective.”
This sort of promoting creates brand recognition, which is simpler for B2B corporations than you may think, despite the fact that most of the individuals who see the ad are unlikely to change into customers.
In February, Hila Perl, director of strategic communications at Papaya Global, told TechCrunch that B2B HR startup Papaya bought a $7 million Super Bowl ad for this very reason.
“This is not a lead generation move,” Perl said of the company’s ad purchase. “It’s not like we can sell more. Of course, yes, we want to see a very direct return on investment, but we all understand that this is a brand building or brand awareness game, not a lead generation game. In my opinion, it’s always more of a marathon than a sprint.”
While OneScreen has no control over who sees an OOH ad, Ewing says his company can still help corporations reach their audience. B2B corporations can provide OneScreen with a list of goal client corporations, and OneScreen’s technology will strategize for them with promoting spots near the goal corporations’ headquarters or where their employees may commute to and from. It uses anonymous cellphone tracking data to see how people responded to an ad, based on metrics akin to website traffic from individuals who passed the ad in comparison with those that didn’t.
The drawback is that the ROI of OOH promoting can’t be tracked as easily as by connecting the dots between someone clicking on a digital ad and then making an online purchase shortly thereafter. However, we hope that the sight of a New York City MTA bus wrapped in a ramp commercial will probably be simpler than an email with a promotional offer.
“There is nothing more powerful than seeing a company and brand in the real world,” Ewing said. “If you present it to the right people, it can be an effective way to soften your foothold with incoming customers or simply attract potential customers.”