In a world of advertising overload, there are few untapped media, it seems, left for brands to leverage. From students faces to the stairs leading you out of Underground stations and the screen you stare at while you are waiting for the cashpoint to dispense your money, just about every blank space you can think of has been hijacked for advertising purposes. But now US marketing firm Brainiacs from Mars has given a new meaning to the word ‘homepage’ with a campaign that uses real houses as an advertising medium.

The firm is offering US residents the chance to have their mortgage paid for a up to a year, in return for having their house turned into a giant billboard, complete with Twitter, Facebook and YouTube logos, and, of course, a giant QR code. Though having scanned the code off screen, we are slightly disappointed to note that it leads to the firm’s full-fat website…

It might look like a gimmick, but Brainiacs CEO and founder, Romeo Mendoza, says his aim is to help deserving, hard-up homeowners, and told Reuters that he would like to turn as many as 1,000 homes across the US into ads for his firm. Since the scheme launched in April 2011, there have been 38,000 applications. The minimum term is one month, the maximum, one year, after which Brainiacs repaints the house in its original colours.