Shark Tank's Kevin Harrington invests in hospitality tech firm Edison Interactive
What's the deal? Kevin Harrington — inventor of the infomercial, creator of "As Seen On TV," and one of the original Sharks on ABC's Shark Tank — has made a strategic investment in Denver-based Edison Interactive and joined its board of directors. The company builds connected screen systems for hotels, golf courses, and other premium out-of-home venues, turning in-room TVs and golf cart screens into programmatic advertising platforms.
The financial terms of Harrington's investment were not disclosed.
Why now? Edison is in the middle of a capital raise to fund hardware deployment and sales growth. It is scaling a national hotel connected TV network and a golf digital out-of-home (DOOH) platform, while building out the programmatic ad infrastructure that lets media buyers access its inventory at scale.
Harrington's involvement is meant to lend credibility at a critical fundraising moment. His track record includes launching more than 500 products that have generated over $6B in global sales.
"I've spent my career identifying distribution channels before the rest of the market catches up, and Edison Interactive is sitting on exactly that kind of opportunity right now," Harrington said. "Hotel in-room screens and golf cart media reach a verified, captive, premium audience that brands have always wanted to access."
What could go wrong? Celebrity board appointments can be more about optics than operations. Edison faces the classic chicken-and-egg problem of ad-supported networks: it needs scale to attract big ad budgets, but needs capital to deploy enough screens to reach that scale. The company is also entering a competitive DOOH market where larger players already have established programmatic pipes and advertiser relationships.
Hotel and golf course operators may also prove hard to sign at the pace Edison needs, given the fragmented nature of hospitality ownership.
The signal: The deal reflects a broader trend of ad tech creeping into every idle screen in the physical world. As digital out-of-home advertising matures, niche venues — hotel rooms, rideshare screens, petrol station pumps, golf carts — are all being pitched as the next premium inventory for programmatic buyers.
Harrington's bet also underscores how direct-response marketing principles are migrating from late-night TV to connected screens everywhere. The promise is the same one he pioneered in the 1980s: measurable, accountable advertising tied directly to audience reach. Whether Edison can deliver on that at scale remains the open question.
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