[noahc]

This is a novel concept. There's an emotional satisfaction that you get out of this. If you ran the ROI numbers on the advertising it probably wouldn't play out, but if you wanted to brag at a cocktail party that you had your company advertised on a Times Square Billboard, then yeah it's worth $10.

I don't think this is a cheap form of marketing for anyone because the ROI doesn't probably make sense. However, it might make sense as a novelty ad/gift or something to that effect.

[incub8or]

Thanks....You are right, there is a certain novelty factor present, but isn't that the case with all (movie/entertainment) marketing? The pricing structure makes sure there is something for everyone and the sales we have to date actually show that startups would be interested in looping the recording of their Times Square message for display on their websites. Funnily enough, our marketing strategy was actually inspired by the promotions studios used to do in the early days of cinema eg a studio used to take a lion to towns and when people came to see the lion, they would sell them a movie ticket. For more on this see: http://bit.ly/pgyGaR

[stfu]

You might want to include in your offer some high quality picture or HD vid of the message on the Times Square screen.

Assuming you guys are great with capturing a "scene" in an impressive way, this would make it at least for me much more interesting. You could include there some photomontage of the final result already on the website.

Maybe in the end the most important shoot of the movie is going to be the one of the sponsors displayed at Times Square. A true money sho(o)t ;)

[pasbesoin]

This was a thought I also had. An HD recording of the message stream, with enough of the surrounding environment to make it look / demonstrate its "liveness" and context.

Rather than trying to deliver individual fragments to all the contributors, see if the ads/messages are clocked tightly enough that you can simply post one or several videos somewhere (YouTube, Vimeo?) and then provide contributors the timestamp of the start of their particular ad/message.

Possible, the ad/message stream videos may take on a life or their own. Two results for the price of one, as it were.

P.S. Beware of liability, though. At your price point, that's a lot of content to vet. And you don't have just obscene content to worry about, but possibly also trademark infringement, accusations of hate speech, etc., etc. Some of which might be hard to catch in a cursory examination. (OTOH, one brief display might reduce the change of facing legal action. IANAL and all that.)

[incub8or]

Thanks a lot guys. Very helpful suggestions.