Advertising Projectors — Ads, Offers and Logos in Light

An advertising projector displays your ad, offer or logo on a floor, wall or building using light. Switch it on and the message appears. Swap one small disc and the message changes — no printing, no vinyl, no waste, no waiting.

First, the naming, because this market uses three names for one device. An advertising projector, a logo projector and a gobo projector are the same product. “Gobo” is the technical name for the small disc that carries your artwork; “logo projector” and “advertising projector” describe what people use it for. If you have been comparing all three, you have been comparing one machine.

What businesses actually project

• The logo — at the entrance, on the facade, on the floor inside the door.
• Offers — “FLAT 40% OFF” on the floor of the entrance during a sale, gone the day the sale ends.
• Seasonal messages — Diwali, wedding season, year-end clearance, each its own disc.
• Directions — arrows and wayfinding in malls, hotels and large stores.
• Menus and specials — on a restaurant wall, changed as often as the kitchen changes.

The discs are small and cheap compared to the projector, so most buyers keep a set — the logo, two or three offers, a festival design — and rotate them through the year.

Projecting on the floor

The floor is the most effective surface an advertiser has, and the one no printed sign can use. People look down as they walk, a moving crowd flows around a bright mark on the ground, and a message at the entrance is crossed by every single person who comes in.

Floor projection is also where light beats every physical alternative. A vinyl floor sticker scuffs through in weeks under real footfall and looks worn long before it is replaced. A projected mark cannot wear out, because there is nothing on the floor to damage — the same reason factories use projection for floor safety markings that forklifts would destroy in paint.

Two practical points for floors. Project as close to straight down as the mounting allows, because a steep angle stretches the artwork. And pale, matt flooring shows the message far better than dark or glossy tiles, which absorb or scatter the light.

The honest limitation: light competes with light

Projection is invisible in direct daylight. No wattage fixes this — it is physics, and a supplier who says otherwise is not being straight with you. An advertising projector earns its keep from dusk onwards, and indoors wherever the lighting is ambient rather than flood-bright.

For Indian retail this is less of a problem than it sounds, because the hours that matter — evening shopping, restaurant service, wedding events, mall footfall after dark — are exactly the hours projection works best. But if your frontage does its business at noon, a printed or illuminated board remains the right tool, and our projection vs printed signage comparison says so in detail.

Which projector for which job

Distance decides wattage. Measure from where the projector will mount to where the message lands.

• Up to 3 metres — 40W. Shop entrances, floor projection from a standard ceiling.
• 3 to 5 metres — 60W. Showroom floors, restaurant walls, wider entrances.
• 5 to 8 metres — 100W. High ceilings, larger floor graphics, small facades.
• 8 metres and beyond — 150W or 200W. Building facades and long outdoor throws.

Add a step if the space is brightly lit. Indoors, the AURA series covers most shops. Anything mounted outside — a facade, a forecourt, the ground in front of the shop — needs a sealed outdoor unit: our ORBIT and NOVA series are both IP67 rated, suited to permanent outdoor mounting through the monsoon. An indoor unit must never be mounted outside, whatever the price advantage.

Current prices for every model and wattage, live from our shop:

What changing the ad actually involves

This is the part that surprises people used to printed signage. The artwork lives on a small disc. To change the message, you open the gobo holder, lift one disc out, drop the next one in, and close it — about a minute, no tools, no technician. A shop can run the logo all year and switch to the sale disc for two weeks without touching anything else.

Most advertising artwork — bold text, an offer, a price, an arrow — is single-colour and simple, which means it suits a metal gobo, the cheaper of the two disc types. Glass discs earn their extra cost only when the artwork needs colour, gradients or fine detail, which for ads is usually the logo disc alone.

Frequently asked questions

Tell us what you want to project

Send us the message or artwork, where it should appear, the distance from the mounting point, and how bright the space is in the evening. We will tell you which projector and which disc type fit — and we will say so plainly if your space is too bright for projection to look the way you are imagining.

See the range on our shop page, check current costs on the price guide, read how shops and showrooms use projection, or contact us.