How it works
A billboard used to take a sales rep, a contract, and $5,000. Now it takes $5 and your friends.
CrowdTroll pools small pledges to put seven words on a real digital billboard. If the crowd funds it, we book the board. If it doesn’t, nobody pays a cent.
Three steps. No sales rep.
Write seven words
Type the line and watch it land on a lit board before anyone else sees it. Pick a city and a goal. That’s the whole form.
Friends chip in
Share the link. Friends pledge $5, $10, $25 or $50. Cards are saved, not charged, until the goal is met.
It goes up
When it funds, we book a real digital billboard for a set date window and send you the photo from the highway.
What a goal buys
Pick a goal when you start a billboard. Bigger goals buy longer runs, roughly like this:
- $500
- About a week on one board in most cities, and a few weeks in a college town. The classic first billboard.
- $1,500
- Two to four weeks in most cities. Enough to cover a whole rivalry week and the gloating after.
- $2,500
- Four to six weeks in most cities. In a big market like Chicago, about a month.
- $5,000
- The long run: two months or more in most cities, or about a month in the biggest, priciest markets.
These are estimates. Digital board time is priced by city and by day, so the same goal runs longer in Auburn than in Philadelphia. Every campaign page shows the budget and the date window it buys. That’s what you’re buying, and that’s what we promise.
The money
Backing a billboard takes three taps: pick an amount, tap Back, confirm. Nothing is charged unless it funds. If the campaign reaches its goal, the pledge is collected then. If it doesn’t, nothing happens and nobody pays.
Your payment stays with Apple Pay, Google Pay or Stripe. We never see your card, and there are no card fields on our site.
The fee
10% platform fee + card processing (2.9% + 30¢) added at checkout, only if it funds.
So a $10 pledge looks like this:
- Pledge
- $10.00
- Platform fee (10%)
- $1.00
- Card processing
- $0.62
- Charged if it funds
- $11.62
The whole $10 counts toward the goal. The fees ride on top, and only if it funds.
Refunds
Nothing is charged unless the campaign funds. Your payment stays with Apple Pay, Google Pay or Stripe; we never see your card. If the sign owner rejects the message or it never posts, you're refunded in full automatically. If the sign owner pulls it early, the unused budget is refunded. Once the booked window has run, there are no refunds.
Who says yes
Every message is reviewed by CrowdTroll and pre-approved by the sign network before pledges open.
The sign owner still has the last word. They can reject a message before it posts or pull it early, for any reason. If that happens, the refund rule above applies: refunded in full if it never posts, the unused budget refunded if it’s pulled early.
The rules are short, and they’re public.
Read the content policy