When Alex Ewing was a child growing up in Purcell, Oklahoma, he knew how close to home he was when he saw a billboard out his car window. Now, as CEO of OneScreen.ai, he helps startups like fintech Ramp and tech recruiter Karat advertise through billboards and more.
“I think billboards are cool and help bring creativity back into marketing,” Ewing told TechCrunch. “Unlike a digital screen, it’s a canvas for marketers.”
Ewing joined Boston-based OneScreen last year. The company acts as a software-enabled intermediary between startups and out-of-home (OOH) advertising slots such as billboards, subway ads, etc. OneScreen helps startups find the right placement for their ads based on the audience the company is trying to reach, combined with the platform's demographic and historical data. The Company also uses anonymized location data to help the Company track the success of its campaigns.
OneScreen raised $4.7 million from investors including Asymmetric Capital Partners, Techstars, and Impellent Ventures. The company is now profitable and sales tripled last year.
Billboards and other types of OOH marketing are becoming increasingly popular, especially for startups, Ewing said. According to Statista, U.S. OOH advertising spending is expected to reach $9.3 billion this year and nearly $12 billion by 2029.
So why would a B2B company like Ramp want to advertise in classic consumer ways, like on the outside of a city bus or inside a subway car?
Ewing said companies are looking to turn their attention back to OOH advertising strategies after years of focusing on digital marketing. He added that regulations around privacy and targeted advertising, as well as people's ability to block digital advertising, have made online advertising strategies less successful for many.
“Enterprises—B2B, B2C, Series A, Series B—that are well-funded or publicly traded have said, ‘We can’t invest what we invested in digital anymore, and there’s no ROI.’ ,'” Ewing said. “It just keeps getting more and more expensive and less and less efficient.”
What these types of ads create is brand awareness that is more effective for B2B companies than people realize, even if the majority of people who see the ads are unlikely to become customers.
In February, Hila Perl, director of strategic communications at Papaya Global, told TechCrunch that B2B HR startup Papaya was buying $7 million worth of Super Bowl advertising for that very reason.
“This is not a lead generation move,” Perl said of the company’s ad buy. “We’re not trying to sell more. Obviously so. We want to see a very direct ROI, but we all know that this is a brand building or brand awareness activity and not a lead generation activity. “In my mind, marathons will always be more important than sprints.”
Although OneScreen can't control who sees OOH ads, Ewing said his company can still help businesses reach their target audience. B2B companies can provide OneScreen with a list of target customer companies, and OneScreen's technology develops a strategy that includes ad slots near the target company's headquarters or where employees commute to work. We use anonymized cell phone tracking data to see how people responded to our ads, with metrics like website traffic of those who passed on the ad and those who didn't.
The downside is that the ROI of OOH advertising isn't as easy to track as connecting the dots where someone makes a purchase online right after clicking on your digital ad. But there's hope that seeing New York MTA buses wrapped in ramp ads will be more effective than a cold sales pitch email.
“There’s nothing more powerful than seeing companies and brands in the real world,” Ewing said. “If you give it to the right people, it can be a powerful way to mitigate inbound beachheads or simply drive leads.”
