Screen Bid is a marketplace for physical screen space. Hosts list idle screens in offices, gyms, cafés, coworking spaces, and retail. Advertisers bid to display their brand on a tile. The mechanism that connects the two sides — that decides who gets which screen and at what price — is a live auction. If you're going to buy or host, it pays to understand exactly how that auction works. This is the plain-English version.
Why an auction at all
You could allocate screen space in worse ways. First-come-first-served rewards whoever's fastest, not whoever values the placement most. Fixed pricing set by hand never keeps up with real demand — popular screens end up underpriced and quiet ones overpriced. Private negotiations are slow and opaque.
An auction solves all three problems at once. It lets demand set the price in the open, gives the best placements to whoever values them most, and keeps the whole thing self-serve so nobody has to negotiate a deal for a café TV. It's transparent, liquid, and fair.
The building blocks
Three rules define how a Screen Bid auction behaves. Learn these and you understand the system.
1. Open slots start at a base price
Every screen has a base price — the floor to display on it when the slot is open. If nobody currently holds a slot, you can take it at that base price. No bidding war required; you claim an available placement at the listed floor and you're on screen.
Think of the base price as the honest starting point. It's what a screen is worth when demand is calm. From there, competition takes over only if someone else wants the same slot.
2. Every hold lasts at least six hours
When you win a slot, you hold it for a minimum of six hours. This matters more than it might seem.
A minimum hold protects buyers from churn. Advertising works on exposure over time, and a placement that could be snatched away a minute after you win it would be worthless — you could never plan around it. The six-hour floor guarantees that when you win, you actually get a meaningful, stable block of on-screen time. You can build a campaign on it.
It also keeps the marketplace sane. Without a minimum hold, screens could flip constantly in rapid micro-bids, which helps no one. The six-hour window creates enough stability for both sides to treat a placement as real.
3. To take a held slot, outbid by $1 or 10%
What if the screen you want is already held by another advertiser? You can still take it — but you have to genuinely outbid the current holder. The rule: beat their price by a dollar or ten percent, whichever is greater.
That "whichever is greater" is doing important work:
- On a low-priced slot, the $1 increment dominates. If the current hold is at $5, you need at least $6 to take it — a clear, meaningful step up.
- On a higher-priced slot, the 10% increment dominates. If the current hold is at $200, you need at least $220 — a percentage step that scales with the stakes.
Either way, taking a screen from someone requires a real commitment, not a trivial one-cent nudge. That keeps bidding serious and prevents endless micro-sniping over placements.
A walkthrough
Let's make it concrete with an illustrative example. Suppose there's a screen in a downtown coworking space with a base price of $10.
- You arrive and the slot is open. You claim it at the $10 base price and your tile starts showing. You hold it for at least six hours.
- An hour later, another advertiser wants that screen. To take it from you, they must beat your $10 by the greater of $1 or 10%. Ten percent of $10 is $1, so either way the minimum is $11. They bid $11 and win the slot.
- Demand keeps rising. The next challenger needs to beat $11 by the greater of $1 or 10% ($1.10), so they need at least $12.10. As the price climbs, the 10% rule makes each step proportionally larger.
At every stage, the screen goes to whoever values it most, the price reflects real demand, and each winner gets a stable, guaranteed block of time.
What the winner actually gets
Winning an auction isn't just a promise — it's verified. Screen Bid runs a display-player heartbeat on every screen, so the display continuously reports that it's live and showing tiles. Your winning hold translates into guaranteed exposure: confirmed on-screen time on a screen you can prove was running. If a screen goes dark, you're not billed for exposure that didn't happen.
So the auction and the measurement work together. The auction decides where your brand goes and what you pay; the heartbeat confirms it actually showed.
Why this design is good for both sides
For advertisers, the auction means fair access with no gatekeepers. You never negotiate; you bid. Open slots are instantly available at base price, and even contested screens are winnable if you value them enough. Combined with no minimum spend and no long-term contract, you can enter, win a few screens, and learn — then scale into whatever's working.
For hosts, the auction means their idle screens are priced by real demand rather than a guess. A screen in a high-demand location earns more as advertisers compete for it, and the base price ensures it earns something even when demand is quiet. Idle inventory turns into income automatically.
The mental model to keep
If you remember nothing else, remember the three rules:
- Open slots cost the base price.
- Holds last at least six hours.
- Taking a held slot means beating the current price by $1 or 10%, whichever is greater.
Everything else about buying screens on Screen Bid follows from those.
The takeaway: the auction is simple by design — claim open slots at base price, hold them for at least six hours, and outbid held slots by $1 or 10% — so the best placements go to whoever values them most, at a price set in the open.
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