Onescreen.ai Joins the Automated Out of Home Crowd

Onescreen.ai raised $1.2 million in pre-seed funding to automate the buying and selling of digital out of home inventory.  The company’s investors include Hubspot cofounders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, Lola.com CEO Mike Volpe, buySellAds.com CEO Todd Garland and HappyNest CRO Jeanne Hopkins.  Sam Mallikurjunan is cofounder and CEO.  The company has 13 employees.

Business Insider has published the OneScreen pitch deck.    Onescreen estimates the 50% of all OOH inventory goes unsold each month and only 6% of sales are automated.  50% vacancy doesn’t seem right for roadside bulletins.  OneScreen must be including place based and small screen networks in the occupancy figures.   The roadside billboard companies we talk to usually have vacancy rates of 20% or less.

 

Business Insider says OneScreen has a $100 billion revenue opportunity.  Will someone explain to us how OneScreen expects to be 10 times the size of the US total out of home market and 4 times the size of the current global out of home market?   The pitch deck suggests OneScreen can reach $1 million in quarterly revenue by the third quarter of 2021.  It’s a long way from $1 million to $100 billion!

Insider’s take:  Onescreen.ai joins Adquick, Blip, Adomni, Vistar and many others in saying that the OOH market is broken and needs to be automated.  Too early to tell whether there’s anything unique here or if it’s just a me-too automated product.  The achilles heel of most automated sales platforms is that they require operators to spend lots of time loading their assets into automated buying systems with an uncertain prospect of ever receiving meaningful revenues.

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2 Comments

  1. For the record, Adomni does not think that the OOH market is broken.

    We do think it is under-valued and we think technology can bridge a gap, when it is implemented right.

    We also don’t think Adquick, Blip, Vistar and Adomni are similar enough in business scope to be grouped together as equivalents. Each has a unique selling proposition, despite the common thread of being online platforms.

    I’ll also add that almost every business began as a startup. We should support any/all people and companies that are investing their time, money and investor’s money into growing the Out of Home pie.

    Every pitch deck for a seed round has bold claims. Let’s support these guys and applaud their bold desire to grow out of home’s share to a bigger slice of the Marketing pie.

    There’s plenty of growth oriented dollars to go around.

    -Jonathan Gudai (CEO Adomni)

  2. Jeffrey Saulter Jones

    I think the problem with automatic buying is the same problem that plagues the industry as a whole.

    With other industries standards are set, and become common. Mobile carriers use 4g, LTE, 5G; Tech Companies use Bluetooth, USB, WiFi.

    Outdoor has independents, with multiple displays with various generations, from different manufacturers, with various scheduling and pricing models.

    There are not many national digital campaigns. And the pain point for someone to buy a small segment of a market online, only to have to speak to someone about artwork, submit to various systems, and work with multiple companies outside of the ad buy, is frustrating.

    And because OOH is not measured like programmatic online ad buys, all measurements are estimated assumptions.

    Just like standard sizes have been set by the industry, new dooh standards must be adopted.

    Keeping in mind the reason someone buys a spot is to promote their business. Not to pick from a clip art library, throw up a phone number and hand over their marketing dollars, because the cost is low.

    If the focus shifts to how can we ensure the highest value for the advertiser, then the mission to sell ads every 3 seconds at low cost will not become that standard.