By Caitlin Granfield
Jacob Stonecipher’s startup idea of using drones for aeriel advertising came to him while he was at a New Jersey beach, watching planes carrying banner ads. He knew there had to be a better and more sustainable way to advertise in the sky. And so for the past few years, he has been building Sustainable Skylines to do just that.
Last week, Stonecipher launched his Miami-based startup’s first drone carrying banner ad in Miami Beach. It covered a five-mile radius along South Pointe Park, without the carbon emissions of a single-engine plane. The Ad Council banner carried by a five-foot drone read, “Buzzed Driving is Drunk Driving,” just ahead of Art Basel and Art Week, one of Miami Beach’s busiest periods for tourists and residents.
“This was the first ever drone-based banner towing flight here in the country, so it’s very exciting,” says Stonecipher, Sustainable Skylines’ founder and CEO, in an interview with Refresh Miami. “It was a very long time coming. We’ve been working with the FAA both at the federal and local level.”
Just two days before the launch, he was granted FAA approval for a “beyond visual line of sight waiver” that enables the company to send the drone beyond the visual line of sight of the pilot and launch sight. Two observers were on the beach communicating with the pilot about any potential obstacles, as required by the FAA.
Stonecipher says he chose Miami to launch his startup because it’s a “true 365 market” for innovation and venture dollars. The startup raised $1 million in 2023.
The next steps are to introduce drone advertising to Fort Lauderdale, St. Petersburg and Tampa. “Our intention is to begin scaling kind of right away and eventually bring this across the country,” Stonecipher says.
What makes Sustainable Skylines appealing to investors and advertisers is the data and analytics showing how many people would have likely seen the banner ad.
“The goal is to provide transparency to the advertising brand as to how their campaign performed, which is really almost a requirement for most national and sophisticated brands today,” says Stonecipher. “When you have the data you can really work with brands to make it a much more targeted activation.”
This information is gathered from computers on the drone that track telemetry, or GPS coordinates and timestamps, and third-party cellular data. By using real-time geospatial and cellular data, the company can show clients the audience size and the reach of their ad campaign.
There are additional markets that commercial drones can serve, including environmental surveying, public safety, logistics and so forth, Stonecipher says.
“There’s a lot of lot of opportunity for commercial drones and it’s very difficult for companies to access drones without going through the difficult process of building the infrastructure and getting regulatory approvals,” he says of how his company has an edge in a largely untapped market. “As a company that is generating revenue, has the regulatory approvals and has a fleet and pilots, we’re really setting ourselves up to win the bigger opportunity of the commercial drone space.”
Although Ad Council is the first customer, Stonecipher says Sustainable Skylines has a list of brands that the team is currently in the process of signing.
Stonecipher’s team now numbers eight, with the addition of Luke Yonge, a drone pilot and drone cinematographer, and engineer Santiago Perez, who worked at Watts Innovations, a drone development and technology company. Stonecipher is currently looking to hire more commercial drone pilots, visual observers, safety officers and positions in account management and business development.
The company’s distribution center is in Opa-Locka. A mobile command vehicle carries the drone, the banner and a pilot station, goes to the launch site, executes the flight and returns to the distribution center.
Stonecipher said that drone advertising cuts about 90% of the carbon emissions compared to single-engine planes, and reduces sound decibels to less than half of that heard by a plane.
His drones fly 100 feet lower to the skyline and go 2/3 slower than a plane. “This makes a sizeable difference in the readability of that banner,” he says. “It’s an exciting and innovative way to promote your message.”
READ MORE IN REFRESH MIAMI:
- Sustainable Skylines pulls in $1M to lift off Miami drone advertising startup
- Your drone in a box? Look no further than Hextronics
- Miami-based UrbanLink is all aboard with future eVTOL cargo service
- The Miami-Dade Innovation Authority’s new public challenge is all about improving how we get around town
- Israel’s Spinframe sets up in Miami to offer AI-powered vehicle-inspection systems
