Google in the past had Adwords for magazine and radio ads built into the product. It wasn't a bad idea, it failed because the timing was completely wrong. In those days, online advertising was super cheap and print/radio was expensive. We performance advertising guys were making $50 in profit on a $10 online ad buy. Print was so worthless at the time there was the saying: What is the difference between buying print ads and setting money on fire? Burning the money provides some heat.
Now that ad prices have more sanity and relative value across mediums, now may be the time to do this.
I see this as an idea that will happen, it is just a matter of when.
I'd start buy building a big data model to value billboard space. Estimate the eyeballs using traffic data, size, visual competition, etc. Sell the analysis, broker space, and then in 5-10 years you could build the Adwords model and eventually own the whole damn industry. You could also sell the company to an Ad Agency at any point.
I’ve worked on this in London recently, presenting my working concept (and months of data in tableau by location behind it) at a few events. The industry is a few years off it, particularly the physical tech, which would require digital screens to be hooked up to an ad server of sorts (that doesn’t really exist programmatically either) and then serving custom ad formats (non IAB format) in real-time (taking in variable factors that could effect the demographic and/or volume of eyeballs). Measurement of the eyeballs and said demographic is the gap, though that’s more than currently exists in the Out of home market right now(nothing!).
It has legs, you just need serious commitment from an owner of inventory (physical boards), which are controlled by 3 or 4 organisations.
Now that ad prices have more sanity and relative value across mediums, now may be the time to do this.
I see this as an idea that will happen, it is just a matter of when.
I'd start buy building a big data model to value billboard space. Estimate the eyeballs using traffic data, size, visual competition, etc. Sell the analysis, broker space, and then in 5-10 years you could build the Adwords model and eventually own the whole damn industry. You could also sell the company to an Ad Agency at any point.