As I assumed initially, you've mis-read my original post.
"The chances of hundreds upon thousands of businesses wanting to advertise on a single screen as you put it, isn't going to work."
This isn't an ideas thread, the idea has already been executed and the results have come in. The chances of clients wanting to advertise on a single screen in hundreds of thousands of businesses is proving to be working.
There's only 24 hours in a day, so the chance of a certain target market walking past a single screen and seeing a certain ad, isn't going to happen.
This was thought about in the early days of the company's birth, however, the conclusion we came to was that we can't ever really narrow down where each target market is going to be and what precise time. The best we can do is to categorize the screens based upon their location and run the ads non-stop. If the screen is located in a restaurant, we can show ads that are food/beverage related.
So you expect every business we approach to possess a Smart TV with internet capabilities in order to stick a USB with an OS in to show ads.. right, got you.
Personally, I prefer giving power to the RPi (as the brains of the whole thing) to do the work for me. If things go wrong, the RPi knows the procedure. If things slow down, the RPi knows what to do. If it overheats, it shuts itself off for a period of time to cool down and then turns itself on again once it's safe to do so. All this is happening automatically, everyday, and we're able to track every little action, wherever we may be. On top of all of this, let's not forget the ads that didn't play that our clients had already paid us for. The RPi took notes of this and did the work for us so that the ads that did play, expire as they should and those that didn't, automatically get their airtime extended. Let me see you achieve this sort of advanced functionality on a USB.. it simply can't be done because a USB is a storage device and a RPi is a computer. Let me repeat, a USB is a storage device and a RPi is a computer.
That's fantastic to hear!
Awesome, wish the best for you and your ex-Ubuntu Software Developer!
I get a feeling you think I'm taking credit for thinking of the idea.. which isn't true. I simply took the idea and executed it in my own way, for my local area and it worked. Thank you for the research though, it'll prove insightful for anyone reading this thread.