1. Choosing a screen

Each listing is one robot's screen at one venue. Compare them on:

• Venue and city: a mall atrium, an office lobby, a campus, a shop floor.
• Audience: who walks past and roughly how many a day. Footfall is the owner's own estimate and is labelled that way.
• Screen: size, resolution and orientation, so you know how your ad will look.
• Ad hours in the screen's local time, and the days it shows ads.
• Guaranteed plays per hour. At most a fixed number of ads share a place on the screen, so each booked ad is promised a minimum number of plays an hour while the screen is up. This is the number your delivery is measured against.
• Track record for the last 30 days, from the robot's own reports: verified plays, how much of its ad hours the screen was up, how many plays were reported live, and screenshots taken.
• Availability: the next 30 days, with days that are full or have one slot left.

Questions about the place or the audience? Use Ask the owner on the listing. Chats stay in your Messages.

2. Booking

The booking form has three steps:

1. When and where: first and last day, daily hours within the screen's ad hours, which weekdays, and the placement (full screen, a side, top, bottom or centre).
2. Your ad: its name, format and file (or text), and seconds per play.
3. Terms: the price you agreed with the owner, if any, and a message.

As you fill it in, the summary shows the days, the plays you'll be promised and the estimated cost at the owner's list price. If a placement is already fully booked on some of your days, it tells you before you send.

The owner then approves or declines. Approving books the slot and accepts the dates, hours and price in your request; the campaign page shows it as your booking confirmation. The ad starts on its first day without anything else from you.

3. Preparing your ad

People see a robot's screen from a few metres away, often while walking. One message, large type, strong contrast and your name or logo work better than detail. Viewers can close an ad (after a delay the owner sets); closed plays are counted and reported separately.

4. Proof of play

Every approved booking has a report built only from what the robot sends to XPARO. The owner can't type into it.

Play log

One row per play: start and end time, seconds on screen, and how it ended (played to the end, closed by a viewer, interrupted, or failed). The full log downloads as CSV.

Promised vs delivered

For each day: the plays promised for your hours (guaranteed plays per hour × hours) and the plays delivered (shown to the end or closed by a viewer). Failed plays are not counted.

Screen uptime

The robot's ad player reports in every minute while it's running. The report shows how much of your booked hours it was up, so a short day says why: "player off for 40 min" is different from "not played".

Screenshots

Robots running XPARO's own player capture their screen a couple of seconds into your ad's first play each hour and send the picture with the play's time. The report says whether each screenshot was taken during the play it belongs to. A few players (for example XP-shell kiosks) can't take screenshots yet; their listing says so.

Live reporting

Plays normally reach XPARO within seconds. A robot that was offline stores its plays and uploads them later; the report shows what share arrived live.

Integrity checks

Plays outside your booked days or hours, plays marked complete that ran shorter than booked, and overlapping plays are flagged.

Live status

While your campaign runs, its page shows whether the screen is online and whether your ad is on screen right now.

You can share a read-only link to the report, or print it to PDF, for your manager, client or accounts team.

5. Paying the owner

You pay the screen's owner directly, by whatever method you agree. XPARO charges no commission, and it doesn't hold, refund or guarantee payments, so protect yourself the way you would with any supplier:

• Put the agreed price in your booking request, so the owner accepts it when they approve.
• Pay after the first days of the report, or in parts against delivered plays.
• Check the listing's track record, reviews (only from advertisers whose ad ran there) and the owner's other listings.
• Keep the conversation in XPARO Messages, so there's a record, and report anything suspicious.

Questions