These days, digital advertisements are seen basically anywhere you can mount a display, including store windows, building facades, lobbies and dozens of other places.
Thanks to the help of Elon Musk and a Canadian technology company, you can add outer space to that list.
According to Business Insider, Canadian startup company Geometric Energy Corporation is in the process of building a satellite that will have a pixelated display screen where advertisements, logos and art will appear.
That satellite will be launched via the Musk-owned SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
The screen, however, won’t be big at all because the satellite in question – a CubeSat – is quite small, so there’s no chance of seeing it from Earth.
Once in orbit, a selfie stick attached to the side of the satellite will film the display screen, which will then be livestreamed on YouTube or Twitch so anyone can see what’s being advertised on the screen.
Simon Reid, GEC’s CEO and co-founder, told Business Insider that organizations hoping to advertise on the screen will have to buy tokens to claim, locate and design a pixel on the screen. Tokens can be paid for with cryptocurrency.
Businesses, advertisers, artists, and anyone else who is interested will be able to put their illustrations on the CubeSat’s display screen, Reid said.
“There might be companies which want to depict their logo … or it might end up being a bit more personal and artistic,” Reid said. “Maybe Coca-Cola and Pepsi will fight over their logo and reclaim over each other.”
Reid imagines the CubeSat display screen to look similar to artboards such as Reddit Place and Satoshi’s Place.
On Twitter, Reid was adamant that no advertising would be viewable from the ground, and would obstruct any views.
Please note that Geometric will never have space advertising viewable from the Earth without aide of technology. It is not obtrusive space advertising that Geometric plans for, it is just to stream data from space of a display screen captured (which no one sees from the ground).
— Samuel Reid (@SamuelReidGEC) August 9, 2021
Reid didn’t tell BI how much ad space will cost, but it’s probably safe to assume that advertising in space comes at a premium.
Details of the display technology being used was also pretty scarce, but if this catches on, we should expect to see more innovations around in-space advertising.
