While writing about ad fraud and dying traffic economics, my mate Mike and I were building something on the side. Now it’s ready to share.

The Thesis, Briefly

I’ve covered this before. Ad budgets are feeding bots. AI is replacing the web as the interface layer. The stats are grim:

  • 56% of web traffic is now bots (projected 2026)
  • $100B+ lost to click fraud annually
  • $172B projected ad fraud cost by 2028

The punchline: you can’t bot a billboard. Physical screens in physical locations mean verified human eyeballs. No click fraud. No inflated impressions. Tech companies figured this out - Apple, Amazon, Google are now major OOH spenders.

When you book an OOH campaign, you know when and where it will appear and that you’ll have an audience - no ad blockers, fast-forwarding, bots, or fake clicks.

— OAAA

The Gap Nobody Was Filling

But OOH has its own problem: access.

Traditional billboard advertising means $5,000-50,000 minimums, sales team negotiations, and weeks of lead time. The industry is built for enterprise. Programmatic DOOH platforms exist, but they assume you have professional creative assets and B2B budgets.

The irony: digital ads democratized. Anyone can run a Google ad with $50 and a credit card. But putting your face on a billboard? Enterprise only. The consumer market - birthdays, proposals, business launches, personal moments - was completely unserved.

All we need to do is just be a little bit less shit.

— Mike

I loved that quote so much I got us matching t-shirts. The bar in consumer DOOH is underground. Nobody was building for the person who just wants to surprise their partner with a billboard proposal.

Introducing FameCake

FameCake is mobile-first billboard booking for everyday moments.

The use cases:

  • Personal moments - birthdays, proposals, graduations, memorials. Moments that deserve more than an Instagram story.
  • Small businesses - grand openings, promotions, local awareness. Billboard advertising without the enterprise price tag.

How it works:

  • Upload a photo, add a message
  • AI generates professional creative in seconds
  • Pick your screens, pick your dates
  • Done. Your moment goes live on a real billboard.

The selfie moment: Every screen has a code. Standing in front of one? Type the code, post to the board, and a countdown timer tells you exactly when to take the shot.

No design skills needed. No sales calls. No $5K minimums. Auto-approved and live within minutes. A day on a screen runs about £15.

We’re live in the UK and expanding.

The barrier to OOH was design skills and enterprise pricing. We removed both.

Why This Works

  • Verification by default: Physical presence = human eyeballs. The fraud problem doesn’t exist because the medium is inherently verified.
  • Consumer-first in a B2B market: While everyone else optimizes for programmatic complexity, we optimize for “book it from your phone in 2 minutes.”
  • Content creation solved: The barrier wasn’t just price - it was “I don’t know how to make billboard-quality creative.” AI handles that now.
  • Atomic units: ~£15 for a day on a screen. No minimums, no contracts. Try it once for a birthday, come back for your business launch.
The unlock

Most people don’t know they can book a billboard. When they find out it costs less than a nice dinner, the conversion is instant.

What We Learned Building It

Going from observer to builder changed our perspective:

  • Writing clarifies, building validates. The ad fraud thesis sounded good in essays. Shipping a product proved whether real people actually cared.
  • Consumer ≠ simple. B2C looks easier than B2B until you’re managing 10,000 individual customers instead of 10 enterprise accounts.
  • Supply is the hard part. Aggregating billboard inventory from fragmented vendors is unglamorous work. But that’s the moat.

What FameCake Doesn’t Solve

Being honest about scope:

  • Supply fragmentation: The DOOH industry is fragmented across dozens of vendors. We aggregate what we can, but coverage varies by market.
  • Programmatic integration: We’re not trying to be a DSP. If you need real-time bidding and audience targeting at scale, you need an enterprise platform.
  • The verification thesis has limits: OOH is fraud-resistant, not fraud-proof. Impression estimates are still estimates.

We’re still early. Still learning. Building in public.

Try It

If you’ve ever wanted to put someone’s face on a billboard: famecake.com

Book one for a birthday. A proposal. A business launch. Or just because.

The web’s attention economy is compromised. The physical world still works.

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