How advertising works

You give up part of your loop; advertisers bid for each individual play; a policy you set decides who appears. This is what happens in the second between a slot opening and an ad arriving.

Entirely optional

A network that never switches this on works exactly as described everywhere else in this help centre. The Monetization pages simply stay empty. Nothing here happens without you putting an ad slot in a playlist.

The idea#

An ad slot is a hole in your playlist. It has a length and a position, and nothing else — no fixed content. Every time the loop reaches it, the platform runs an auction: it describes your screen to buyers, they bid, the highest bid wins, and that creative plays once. The next time round, a different advertiser may win.

One turn of a slot, second by second

1 · Slot opensRequest0.0s1

2 · Auction runsBids in~0.3s2

3 · Creative paintsImpression~0.6s3

4 · Or: nobody bidFallback—4

1The loop reaches the slot and the platform asks for bids. This is a Request.

2Buyers answer with a price and a creative. The highest that your policy lets through wins.

3The creative paints on the glass. Only now is anything counted — and only now are you paid.

4If nobody bids, or nobody bid enough, your own fallback content plays instead.

Why it existsCounting on the painted frame rather than on the winning bid is the difference between honest reporting and optimistic reporting. A bid can be won and never shown: the creative fails to load, the loop moves on, the panel is asleep. ScreenRoll tells the exchange the win went unused in those cases, which costs you a fraction of revenue you were never owed and buys you the reputation that keeps buyers bidding.

What decides your price#

Venue type — set on the location. It is how a buyer says “gyms in London”. A screen with no venue type is invisible to most targeted buying.
Audience — set on the screen. An hourly average is accepted; hour-by-hour detail earns more, because it proves the evening is worth more than the dawn. See Screens.
Slot length — a fifteen-second slot in a sixty-second loop is a quarter of your screen time, and priced as such.
Reliability — a screen that is frequently dark, or that wins bids and fails to show them, is bid on less. This is measured, not claimed.

Two ways an ad reaches your screen#

Ad slot — the platform runs the auction for you and hands the winner to the screen. This is the normal path and the one that appears in your revenue.
VAST — you paste a tag from an ad server you already deal with, and the player asks that server directly, every play. Nothing is stored, nothing is auctioned by us, and the money is settled by whoever gave you the tag.

Example — 20% of a café loop

A five-item loop of ten seconds each: menu, pastry film, ad slot, opening hours, ad slot. Two of ten items are sold, so a passer-by sees an advert roughly every twenty-five seconds, and your own message the rest of the time. The café keeps its screen looking like a café.

Note

Nothing plays without your approval first. Every advertiser that wants your screens waits in the review queue until you allow them.