ATM advertising pioneer i-design has doubled annual sales after signing up further high street banks, hungry for the extra revenues it can generate for them.

Fife based, this minnow joined AIM in July last year with a £9.5m valuation after raising £3.5m of new money and boasts a ten-year track record as a designer of ATM software – its innovative technology enables banks and building societies to sell advertising space on cash machines.

With Royal Bank of Scotland, owner of the UK's largest ATM estate, and Tesco signing up in January, the total number of ATMs licensed to use i-design’s ‘atmAd’ software is now 12,000, representing 34% of all the ATMs operated by financial institutions in the UK. Some 4,500 of these machines are currently available for third-party advertising, making the service an increasingly popular choice for media buying agencies.

For the year to September sales, mostly boosted by the large increase in software sales to RBS and Tesco, leapt from £1m to £2.1m, also assisted by 50% growth in the number of brands booking ATM space. i-design's pre-tax loss was reduced accordingly, by 14% to £536,000, leaving net cash of £1.6m in the coffers.

Although CEO Ana Stewart concedes that advertising budgets are generally being reduced, she thinks atmAd’s unique selling points ‘are critical for advertisers’. Indeed, it seems likely that in troubled times advertisers would seek media where the returns on investment are quantifiable.

Despite progress, i-design’s shares have drifted some way from an ill-timed recommendation here at 52.5p in March, with its early-stage, loss-making nature and association with the banking sector weighing on sentiment. Nevertheless, with momentum building and break-even nearing, the shares are well worth holding.

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i-design group	AIM	£2.96m	21.00p	0.00p
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