DEMO: Screenreach takes interaction from small screens to big ones

Screenreach is one of 53 companies chosen by VentureBeat to launch at the DEMO Spring 2011 event taking place this week in Palm Desert, Calif. After our selection, the companies pay a fee to present. Our coverage of them remains objective.

Screenreach, a service that lets smartphone users interact with digital signs or other large video displays, launched with an additional 800 locations at the DEMO Spring 2011 conference today.

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Screenreach’s mobile application, called Screach, lets mobile-device users interact with video content playing on a large monitor that’s tied into Screenreach’s application. Screach users can cast votes and interact with whatever’s on the display, which can range from polls to quizzes and much more. For example, a user could watch a soccer game and pick his favorite player, and then share his choice, as well as a coupon or other reward, with his friends on Facebook.

Screach automatically collects that information and uses it to profile its users, and packages that information for advertisers. The idea is to help out-of-home advertisers who place ads on digital signage in public venues better target their ads for the demographics present. In its ad-targeting aspect, it bears some similarity to 140Fire, another startup that launched at the Launch Conference last week that also helps advertisers better target their ads.

The company is launching its service with 13 museums in the United Kingdom and a fan voting service with the Newcastle United Football Club. It’s also launching its Faces application — which lets users take a picture of themselves and display it on a screen in-store — at 800 coffee shops in the United States. (Those 800 locations come via a deal with RMG Networks, an out-of-home advertising network.)

Screenreach has raised $1.2 million from angel investors and Hotspur capital partners. The company, based in Newcastle upon Tyne in the U.K., has eight employees in the United Kingdom and Romania. It was founded least year.

Update: This story has been corrected to reflect the fact that Screenreach is launching its Faces application in coffee shops in the United States, not the United Kingdom, as well as clarifying the nature of Screenreach’s service.