Your LED video wall can earn. Running it as a DOOH asset.

A screen on your facade or in your lobby is seen by the same people whether it shows your offer or someone else's. If your own content fills only part of each loop, the rest is unsold time. Sell that time, and a marketing cost becomes a small media business. It works when the screen, the loop, the contract and the permission are all set up for it from the start.

Who buys slots on your screen?

Start with the people who already share your audience. Whoever walks past your shop, parks at your building or waits in your lobby is someone a neighbour would pay to reach. If you own the building, LED video walls for commercial buildings covers the facade and lobby walls that carry this kind of loop.

• Neighbouring businesses. The clinic, the café, the gym, the coaching centre, the property project launching down the road.
• Brands that sell to your crowd. An office-lobby screen reaches people at work. A mall frontage reaches shoppers. A facade on a college road reaches students.
• Seasonal buyers. Ugadi, Dasara, Diwali, admission season, the cricket season. Demand arrives in waves, and your pricing should follow it.
• Marketplace advertisers. A screen listed on the PixelSpot DOOH marketplace can be found on the map and booked by the slot. Nothing plays without your approval.

How do you price a slot?

We don't publish slot rates, and you shouldn't borrow one. The right price depends on your costs, your audience and how much of your loop you actually sell. Work it out from your own numbers, in three steps.

Step one: count your inventory

Plays per slot per day = operating hours × 3,600 ÷ loop length in seconds. Take a 60-second loop of six 10-second slots, running 14 hours a day. Each slot plays 840 times a day. Keep two slots for your own brand and sell four, and you have 3,360 plays a day to sell, or 1,00,800 in a 30-day month.

Step two: add up what the screen costs you each month

• E, electricity: the units the wall uses × the rate on your own bill.
• A, upkeep: nothing for covered faults during the 2-year warranty, then an AMC.
• O, operations: internet, and someone's time to approve creatives and chase payments.
• P, permissions: any licence or approval cost, spread by month.
• K, capital: the purchase price you want back, divided by the months you give it.

Step three: set the floor, then price by daypart

Floor price per play = (E + A + O + P + K) × (1 + margin) ÷ (plays for sale × expected fill)

Expected fill is the share of your sellable plays you can realistically book. Be modest in the first months; assuming half keeps the floor honest. Below the floor, a sale loses money. Above it, price by daypart: morning and evening peaks higher, mid-afternoon lower. Count the people or vehicles passing at each daypart for fifteen minutes, on a weekday and at the weekend, and use those counts to explain the difference to buyers. The electricity line, E, is the running cost that rises with wall size and brightness; monsoon, power and GST has the units a month by wall size.

How should the loop be designed?

A loop is a product. Design it so every advertiser gets fair frequency and your building still looks like your building. If slots and loops are new to you, DOOH advertising, explained shows the arithmetic from the advertiser’s side.

• Keep your own brand in every loop. A screen that is all third-party ads stops reading as your sign, and your permission may cover only your own branding.
• Fix the loop and slot length and tell buyers. Changing them mid-contract changes what everyone bought.
• Schedule by daypart. PxlOS switches playlists by time of day from a phone, so a morning buyer and an evening buyer never collide.
• Dim after dark. Above about 500 nits at night is glare. Set a night schedule, and a switch-off time if homes face the screen.
• Write a content policy. List the categories you won't carry, and approve every creative before it runs.

What goes into an advertising contract?

• What is sold: the screens, slot length, loop length, hours, days and start date.
• The delivery promise: a play count, with a proof-of-play report from PxlOS.
• Make-good: if the screen is down, the campaign extends by the missed plays instead of a refund.
• Creative: the pixel size and ratio, the approval window, and your right to refuse.
• Payment: in advance for short or first-time buyers.
• Responsibility: the advertiser answers for what its ad says.
• GST: selling advertising is a service with its own GST treatment. Have your CA set up the invoicing before the first sale.

Running it on PxlOS and the marketplace

PxlOS is the cloud CMS each PixelSpot wall is registered on at handover. You schedule playlists by time of day from your phone, group screens and watch their health live. It logs every playback, which is the proof of play your buyers will ask for.

List the screen on the DOOH marketplace and advertisers can find it on the map and book slots. Every booking waits for your approval, and you see exactly what each advertiser paid. Already own a screen from another vendor? PixelPlayer brings it onto PxlOS.

Uptime is the product you sell. A facade flush against the building needs front-service cabinets, so a module can be swapped from the face. Every PixelSpot wall ships with 5% spare modules from the same production batch, and the 2-year pixel-to-pixel warranty brings a response within 24 hours in Bengaluru.

Permissions: ask before you sell

This is the step owners skip, and the one that can switch the screen off. Paid advertising for other brands on a road-facing screen may be treated differently from your own name board. In Bengaluru, the city corporation, still widely known as BBMP, may license it as a hoarding. Rules and fees change, so check the current position with the local body before you sell the first slot. Elsewhere in Karnataka, ask the city corporation or municipal council.

Read your lease and the building association's rules too, and the mall's if you are in one. An indoor lobby screen inside your own premises is simpler, but a lease can still restrict paid advertising. The LED hoarding page covers the roadside case.

What wall should you build for DOOH?

Match the pitch to where the audience is, as for any wall. A facade read across the road suits outdoor P5 at ₹5,150 or P6 at ₹5,000 per sq ft + GST. A shopfront read from the pavement suits outdoor P4 at ₹5,100 per sq ft + GST. A lobby wall read from a few metres suits indoor P2.5 at ₹6,150 per sq ft + GST.

A shape close to 16:9 lets buyers reuse video they already have. A 16 × 9 ft outdoor P4 wall is about ₹8,45,000 + GST, and a 20 × 10 ft outdoor P6 wall about ₹10,78,500 + GST, controller included. Add auto-dimming, IP65 at the face and front service if there is no walkway behind. The outdoor LED range has the options, and the site survey guide covers where to put it.

Where to go next

A wall that sells its spare minutes is still your wall first. Get the loop, the contract and the permission right, and the screen that promotes your business can also help pay for itself. For the buyer's side of the same deal, read the advertiser's guide to DOOH.