Flat monthly fee or percentage of sales? How to charge your indoor TV advertisers — and how to prove results

The decision rule: the model follows the measurement

An operator who sells their first slot usually finds out in month two that price was never the issue. The advertiser does not call to say it was expensive — they call to ask whether it worked. And that is where the conversation stalls, because the screen is silent: it plays, but it records neither who looked nor who walked up to the counter because of it.

In the episode, the answer starts on the flat-fee side, and the criterion is reputation and reach: "if you have 40 locations in town, 50 locations and everybody knows you, your chances of landing a monthly deal are higher […] you already have your brand". Whoever has a name in town charges a monthly fee because the advertiser is buying trust along with the screen.

On the percentage side the criterion is different, and it is technical: "the percentage of revenue has to be directly tied to conversion […] if you can measure that, then you go for the percentage". It is not a preference, it is a prerequisite. The sentence that sums up the whole problem came right after:

This is the logic the advertiser already knows from paid traffic: invest X, measure the return, decide whether to scale. The host illustrates it with his own campaign — "each person reaching me is costing, let's say, R$ 10" — and the episode itself flags the number as a guess ("I don't remember the figure"). Treat it as a hypothetical calculation example, never as a real market cost: what matters is the structure of the maths, not the figure.

The honest counterpoint deserves to be on the record: we queried four AI assistants on 2026-09-10 with a screen operator's question, and all four recommended a flat monthly fee, treating the percentage as rare or unworkable — the recurring argument being that "it is hard to attribute precisely which sale came from the TV ad". They are right about the market standard. Where this article diverges is on the conclusion: a percentage is not impossible, it is conditional. The condition is called attribution, and it can be built — at a cost, with known weaknesses, and with honesty about what it does not prove.

The three arrangements side by side: flat, percentage, hybrid

Before the table, three names you will meet in any indoor media negotiation and should not be caught off guard by:

• Rental / flat monthly fee. A closed amount per period, per screen or per bundle of locations. It is the standard of the digital signage market and the simplest to run.
• Barter. A no-cash trade: you provide the screen, the content and the management, and receive space, product or service in return. Very common at the first location, when neither side wants to risk cash.
• Revenue share. Splitting a percentage of the advertising revenue with whoever provides the space. Do not confuse it with the percentage charged to the advertiser: revenue share is the deal with the venue owner, and the split depends on who pays for the TV, the installation and the internet.

There is a fourth arrangement the episode touches on, and it solves the occasional advertiser: "sometimes you don't even need a monthly fee, you charge by how many times you'll run the spot". That is selling by campaign or by season — the clothing shop advertising the restaurant in the week before Valentine's Day, for example. Short-period billing, no monthly contract, and with the advantage that the result lands concentrated on a date when the advertiser can feel the movement themselves.

The media kit for a single screen — and what counts as an estimate

Before paying, the advertiser expects something in writing. It does not have to be an agency document: a one-page PDF with three pieces of information already puts you ahead of most local operators.

1. Where the spot runs. Address and type of each location, with a photo of the installed screen. If there are five locations, list all five.
2. How many insertions per day. The 15-second spot plays every how many minutes, within which opening hours. That is countable and under your control.
3. Estimated impressions. Foot traffic per day × days in the month × how often the spot plays. From that number you can work out the CPM per location — the cost per thousand estimated impressions at that point — which is the metric the advertiser uses to compare your screen with a boosted post in the same neighbourhood.

For your own side of the maths — what the platform costs and how many slots it takes for the screen to stop being an expense — see the math of the first location, and for the platform cost with a free trial, the free trial and fast setup guide, and the current figures are always on the plans page.

Proof of play vs. proof of conversion

This distinction organises the whole article, and confusing the two is how a competent operator loses a client:

Proof of play has a silent prerequisite worth remembering: a screen that goes down does not play, and an airing that did not happen is a contractual obligation unmet. The cost of that is covered in indoor TV switched off: the invisible loss, and per-location monitoring in indoor TV for chains and franchises.

What changes from here on is the framing: attribution at the point of sale. This is not generic broadcast-TV campaign tracking — a traffic spike on the website after the ad aired, UTM tags on a social post. On an in-store screen the question is narrower: which location, which playlist, which time window brought that person to the counter. That is what the tools below try to answer — and dayparting, covered in how to schedule indoor TV by time of day, is a prerequisite for any measurement by window.

The four proof tools (and where each one fails)

They are listed in increasing order of effort. None of them is a silver bullet, and each weakness is stated on purpose — selling any of them as infallible is the shortest route to the advertiser finding out alone.

1. An exclusive coupon or code for that screen

The most reliable of the four and the favourite in the episode: "create a collab coupon between the shop and the venue […] it's the same as saying she saw it at your shop, you're tied to the TV alone". A short code, shown only on the screen and nowhere else, redeemed at the till.

• How to set it up: a code legible from a distance (something like TVSHOP10), with a real discount and a short deadline. It must appear only in the playlist — if it leaks to social media or a flyer, attribution dies.
• What it costs: the discount granted. No tooling.
• Why it fails: it asks the customer to memorise or photograph the code and remember it at the counter; and the final count sits with the shopkeeper, not with you.

2. A QR code with a trackable destination

The most requested tool and the one with the weakest capture. The idea from the episode is a good one and worth copying: instead of sending people to a website, point them at a conversation that arrives pre-stamped — "create your own link, create the customer's messaging link for them to scan […] 'Hi, I saw on the store TV that you have a promotion'. It arrives pre-written, that's proven conversion".

• How to set it up: generate the link with a shortener that accepts UTM parameters, point it at the advertiser's messaging number with a pre-written message naming the screen and the location, and upload the artwork to the playlist like any other asset.
• What it costs: nothing, or the shortener subscription if you want dynamic QR codes.
• Why it fails: the objection is in the episode itself — "but people won't scan it". On a silent screen, in the middle of store traffic, the capture rate is low: hardly anyone interrupts what they are doing to point a phone. Treat the QR code as a bonus, not as the basis of the contract.

On the cost of the destination: if the QR code leads to a conversation the customer starts, the advertiser's reply is not billed per message. The official WhatsApp Business platform pricing page (read on 2026-09-10) describes charges for marketing and authentication messages, while service and utility conversations answered to the user are not billed per message. In other words: fear of "paying per message" should not block this tool — confirm the current terms on Meta's page before building the flow.

3. A dedicated channel per medium (call tracking)

One phone number, one extension or one link that exists only in that medium. Anything arriving there came from the screen, with no reliance on anyone's memory. The market name for the technique is call tracking.

• How to set it up: a virtual number or an exclusive link per location (or per screen network), shown on the spot and nowhere else. It works especially well for service advertisers — plumbers, towing, law firms, accountants — where the next step is a call by nature.
• What it costs: the line or virtual number, plus the work of answering it.
• Why it fails: it only serves businesses whose next step is a call or a message; for counter retail, where the person simply walks in, it captures nothing.

The technique is old, and the episode tells it as a story: a different phone number for each magazine advertised in, so the advertiser knew exactly what each ad brought in. (Anecdote told in the episode; we did not verify the attribution in a primary source.) The logic itself still holds entirely.

4. A screens-only offer or bundle

The cheapest of the four, the only one that demands nothing from the customer, and the one almost nobody uses. Instead of a code, what is exclusive is the product: a bundle, an item or a condition advertised only on the screen network and banned from social media, flyers and the window display.

• How to set it up: agree with the advertiser on an item that exists only on the screens, with its own name and easy to ask for at the counter. Every order of that item, by definition, came from the TV.
• What it costs: only the item's margin. Zero tooling, zero codes.
• Why it fails: it requires discipline from the advertiser not to promote the item elsewhere — and a good item eventually leaks into word of mouth, which contaminates the count after a few weeks. Refresh the offer periodically to keep the reading clean.

The no-technology method: asking at the counter

There is a fifth layer that costs nothing and that plenty of people forget: asking. "Where did you hear about us?" — and the customer says they saw it on the screen. That is declared attribution, the same principle as the keyword campaign at the till ("say you saw it on the TV and get a freebie").

The limitation is obvious and has to be told to the advertiser: it depends on the customer's memory and on the bias of people who answer anything to be agreeable. It works as a signal, to tell you whether the spot is being noticed; it does not work as a contractual metric, because it is not auditable and nobody will agree to pay a percentage based on a shopper's recollection. Use it to calibrate the creative, not to invoice.

The two holes in the percentage model nobody faces

Defending the percentage model without confronting these two points is selling an illusion. They came up in the 2026-09-10 research and they are the real reason the market settled on the flat fee:

Hole 1 — the advertiser may not declare everything

If your pay is a percentage of their sales, every declared sale costs the shopkeeper money. The incentive to "forget" a few coupons exists, and denying it solves nothing. The way out is not more trust, it is a different counting unit: instead of a percentage of revenue, agree on a fee per event you can verify on your side — the conversation that reached your call-tracking number, the click logged in your shortener, the printed coupon kept at the till and photographed at closing. You bill for what you can count yourself.

Hole 2 — local retail rarely has an auditable POS

In neighbourhood and mid-sized-town retail, most businesses have no ERP with an open API to audit. In practice you would be relying on the shopkeeper's good faith about how much each coupon brought in — and that holds true even when the attribution tool works perfectly. Two partial ways out: contract a percentage only on high-ticket, traceable sales (property launches, financing plans, aesthetic procedures, courses), where each sale is an identifiable event, or set the target bonus on a number both parties see on the same screen, on the agreed date.

What to do in month 1, before anything is measured

In the first month you have no track record, no coupon running and nothing to promise. The episode is honest about the timing: "often the return won't be immediate, it'll be a week, a month later". The script that works:

1. A short fixed-term entry contract, with a review date on the calendar. No percentage — there is nothing to measure yet.
2. Install a cheap tool on day one. Screens-only offer or coupon. Both cost margin, not tooling, and start generating data immediately.
3. Deliver the honest media kit with estimated impressions labelled as an estimate, plus the proof of play for the period.
4. At the review, look at the number together. If there was tracked conversion, that is when the hybrid or percentage conversation starts — with the counting unit defined in writing.

One well-documented case is worth more than any rate card: it is what you show the next advertiser down the street. Being transparent about what the screen proves and what it does not prove is what sustains renewals — and in a market where almost nobody measures anything, it is also your commercial edge.

In short: start with the flat fee, because it is what you can bill and deliver today; build the measurement in parallel, with the cheapest tool that fits the location; and only move to a percentage or a bonus once you have a number both sides can see. The screen does not prove conversion on its own — the tool you installed next to it does, and being honest about what it measures is what makes the advertiser renew. On how the data involved is handled, see our Privacy Policy.

Talk to the JMV Indoor team about your screen network →