London cyclists can earn while they ride - with digital ad panels (+ video)

London cyclists will soon have a way of earning money while they ride – by attaching digital advertising frames to their bicycles.

The initiative comes from Lacuna Digital, which claims it is “the world’s first 100 per cent carbon neutral digital ad platform” – pedal power is all that’s needed – and is looking for “early adopters” to sign up ahead of the launch on 1 June.

Here’s a short video in which founder Dan Roberts explains how it works.

The company says:

Lacuna Digital was born from an idea to create more sustainable, smart cities around the world.

Our development of the Lacuna eBoard 1 had its challenges but resulted in the World's first totally carbon neutral digital advertising platform - not even mobile can claim that.

From this innovation comes an exciting opportunity as we pay cyclists per mile for travelling green.

We then sell this space to brands based on the eBoard 1's geo-location giving the following benefits:

- Targeted marketing to varying demographics across London

- Uniform advertising across an area

- Use of live data streams to update information in real time.

Head here to sign up.

Roberts is already an award-winning entrepreneur, having won a Shell LiveWIRE Sustainability Award in 2014 and a Shell LiveWIRE Smarter Future Award in 2015 for BananaBerry, a social enterprise which uses fruit and vegetables that would otherwise go to waste to create smoothies.

In January, his latest venture was the Featured Business of the Month on the Shell LiveWIRE website.

He said: "My interest since the early university years was in finding commercial ways to build green, sustainable businesses.

"After a talk with a close friend who looked at paying cyclists to carry a ‘Santander Cycles’ type mudguard for his dissertation, I felt the need to take advantage of the commercial opportunity (there are up to 500,000 bicycle journeys every day in London alone) as it fits so well into the sustainable city category.

"We have since partnered with a tech firm that specialises in smart city technology, so this is also a growing interest."

He added: "For this venture our product development has been our biggest achievement as we went in with ambitious plans that many (engineers included) believed couldn’t be achieved (power consumption etc).

"We are immensely proud to get through this without having to compromise on the proposition."