Adfree Cities
adfreecities.org.uk
adfreecities.org.uk
Was it cleaner? Was the architecture just very modernist? Did it have something to do with the season?
Eventually, I realized that the difference I was noticing between Switzerland and California (my home state) was that there was simply much less advertising in the physical spaces of cities.
I am not sure if this is a result of some legislature there or if it is just a result of the way the Swiss think about visual design and advertising.
But I absolutely loved it. It was so refreshing to see the beauty of a city block without being bombarded by advertisements.
It really lets the character of a city shine through.
LA, SF and Sac seem to be on the opposite end of the spectrum… practically the only thing you notice are the billboards.
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/politics/geneva-throws-out-ban-...
[0] https://movingtokona.com/why-there-are-no-billboards-in-hawa...
This bike share scheme is only possible because the city traded away its outdoor ad space. There's not more ads, just a monopoly on who sells the space to advertisers. The city might be prettier without the advertisements but it seems a good trade off to be removing vehicles from the road and promoting healthy transport via the bike scheme.
They should force restaurants at public places to provide places to sit, even if you don't buy anything.
Instead, they do crap like anti-homeless spikes...
Also with monopolist it is really easy to keep some standards, quality of the ads.
[Edit to reply to okr, because I'm rate-limited:
Well, then, make the users of the bikes pay the full cost of the bike service.
As it is, you're pushing ads in everyone's face, whether or not they use the bike. Also no thanks.]
Consumer sentiment will be shaped by media other than advertising. You watching Instagram of people drinking alcohol and (seemingly) having fun will make you want to drink alcohol.
Ads for a particular type of alcohol will only steer your selection of product, but do not induce a desire to get it.
This seems very implausible. People's largest expenses are things like housing, healthcare, childcare, and groceries, which are mostly not driven by advertising.
My big city in Poland tried several times to get public-private bike sharing. It ended the same: company ceases operation after few years and take all bikes from the streets. People get nothing while millions already spent.
The brouhaha over the pregnant nurse “stealing” a youth’s Citi bike was only possible due to the habit of under-18 users camping on bikes to continue riding them for free when their timer expired.
Is this an argument for public-private deals?
Great, so long as motorists pay the full cost of the roads.
As road wear and tear is proportional to the third or fourth power of axle weight.
Everything is a choice, we don't HAVE to accept these shitty ads everywhere.
Yes, it's a trade off. I wish my city had free bike share.
It does exist, but then the cost of the bike sharing would have be borne by
a) users of the bike system - this would impact ridership and equity of access. b) local govt - budget would have to come from somewhere.
considering b) would likely mean that the project wouldn't get past planning, really a) is the only alternative.
Everything is a tradeoff.
From my perspective, I'll take shitty ads if the money earned from those ads is spent on significant quality of life improvements. Same reason I support legalization and taxation of gambling, drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, etc where the revenues pay for schools, social services, etc.
> money is fungible
What?
Money being fungible means that one dollar is as good as another. It all goes in a big pile for the budget. In other words, you don't have to match up your revenue sources with your costs (like bikes with advertising), though this is frequently used for the purpose of trying to justify one thing or another.
We want to live in nice towns not in cyberpunk hellscapes where we can't even cross a street without being violently bombarded with advertising. A business should be able to put up a sign on its own building and that's about it.
I get what you mean, but arguments like this confuse the underlying issue of how we value and price things. It's certainly not "only possible" that way. It makes me think of the Mark Fisher line “It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.”
And I won't even go into the corruption that got them the tender in the first place... Fuck JCDecaux!
Your comment has encouraged me to dig up anything I can find about our municipality's contracts with jcd during the upcoming holiday break and, if it's anything like what you've said, raise some awareness.
Our capital got these bikes 10 years before us and had similar issues. A small news outlet made a pretty good report on the "secret costs of city bikes" and that's kind of what I'm going for: https://podcrto.si/skrita-cena-izposoje-koles-v-ljubljani-og...
No, there are many ways to generate revenue to pay for things like that at a (local) government level. Your city sold the ad space and immediately bought an essentially unrelated service (bike sharing) from the same party.
At least the way it works here (Boston area's Bluebikes) is that the same infrastructure supports both the bike sharing and the ad space. There are ads on the bikes and their docks.
So why are billboards, things that are specifically built, along roads, to draw my attention legal?
So let's go adfreecities!
I do think that billboards are ugly and would prefer to not have them, but I don't think that there is a reasonable justification to ban them on safety grounds.
Not just your opinion, but a lot of concrete evidence. We have had billboards for decades now. There's tonnes of data on where accidents happen. Yet no one seems to be able to provide data based backing to their opinions...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/04/remova...
The most distracting thing you could think of (flashy ads) at.the.busiest.intersection... really gets on my nerve
Also, I think this is also a matter of accessibility: these ad vendors are endangering drivers with various health or mental conditions/disorders (e.g., ADD, ADHD, AS).
Driving accidents? Small price to pay, the Instagram model needs followers for her fashion business so it's totally fine for an ad depicting her in a bikini to be placed right in front of a dangerous roundabout where accidents happen on a monthly basis. I wish I was kidding, that exact ad is located just over 1 kilometer away from my house. I should take a picture of it.
You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.
Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.
You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.
- Banksy
I personally like the aesthetic of visual overload that you find in ad-laden cities (let’s say in Tokyo). It makes the space feel living, breathing, and alive, which a city should be. And then the visually quiet spaces, like temples and parks, feel much more sweet.
Also at a conceptual level I disagree with the justification that we should make cities adfree due to the harms of ads (described in OP). Ads will appear elsewhere: within stores, online, on top of taxi cabs, stapled to poles, and so on. We can’t make ads disappear. Our best bet is to target specifically the most harmful ads by law (like misleading/false advertising and such).
> Any way, the bottom line is that simple exposure to ads is not enough for their efficacy and continued existence.
Modern ads are so effective at exploiting our minds that their existence is enough to drive our purchases. You don't even have to be aware of them.
> personal responsibility
is never the answer to powerful corporations abusing the public. Vulnerable people do and always will exist.
> Vulnerable people do and always will exist.
Hear! Hear! Not to mention that children are even more susceptible than adults, and they do not get a choice in their exposure to advertising. There's so much "think of the children" talk to justify intrusions into privacy, but little to be heard (in North America) of exposing them to manipulative marketing tactics _specifically_ designed to wiggle their way into young and adult brains, alike.
I'm strongly in favour of protecting ourselves from advertising in publicly visible areas. Fill it with nature and beautiful things (i.e. art). It's our world, and nobody has a right to our attention.
It seems that you think that banning some ads will make any difference. Ads are really poor at actually convincing you to do anything in the first place. We had to employ multitude of media formats to reduce smoking... and even then, it's not at 0 today.
You will not want to go to McDonalds, just because you saw an ad for it. You first will have to find it acceptable to go to a fast food restaurant, which is shaped by culture. Then the ad may result in you choosing to go to McDonalds.... but at that point you've already chosen to go to a fast food restaurant.
I cannot speak for anyone else, but I can assure you I DO-NOT want them.
People also want pr0n. Should we paste it all over?
But then all ads are pr0n.
They use vulgar manipulative displays to make you lust and desire something usually with overly attractive people.
pr0n feels more honest in a way.
Imagine if NYC banned all visual advertising? One of the most iconic sites of NYC would just disappear.
Can you imagine another possible scenario?
Also, promotion of culture (for example funded by taxes at national or city level) is a thing.
One example, I know of a few graffiti walls near where I live. I'm not sure if the city just allowed the graffitis and the artists paid for supplies themselves of if the city provided them too. I've even heard of cities hiring artists for that.
Sure, electronics are more expensive than spray paint, but definitely not to the point where none of these models could work. Have you ever been at a maker faire? It's amazing what people build (and are willing to spend) just for the heck of creating stuff.
Tokyo is visually interesting so could get an exemption. But ads look much uglier in other places, here's a sample:
Ever thought of that?
I.e. I'd consider visual advertising that draws attention to stuff that is right there (e.g. suggesting to visit the store, bar or show behind the door that's below the advert) as completely different as the same size ad for something that's not relevant to physically being then and there (e.g. a car or insurance).
Advertising is when they bombard you with noisy information while you're crossing a street or waiting for the bus. Nothing but pollution.
> We can’t make ads disappear.
We absolutely can. Make it straight up illegal and start applying some serious fines. I guarantee they will stop.
We can ban ads in certain location/manner/topic but not blanket ban all advertising speech, which would be a 1st amendment issue (and sort of a moot point, it would be politically impossible for something that broad and destructive).
You can get ads off the bus itself but you can’t get ads off the YouTube app the guy next to you is staring at, or the branded swag (that functions as an ad) that this person is wearing.
Perhaps some of that is that my head is too much in the clouds, but I suspect a huge part of it is that the overabundance of ads everywhere trying to manufacture desire has conditioned me to filter out most public signage.
At least in my lived experience, the noise to signal ratio of information out in public is way too high.
I'm often wondering what the speed limit is here because I missed the sign.
I still notice pretty sunsets though.
Even if you remove ads, it's not going to change significantly.
They aren't a proof of ads being too much noise. Not any more than a lion at a zoo is proof that lions have overrun the city.
At first there's a bit of an uncanny valley effect, particularly when driving around a city. Eventually that settles down, and the reduction in low-level visual stimulus is really appreciated. Coming back home, you might see the insane levels of visual pollution we deal with in a new light.
Not qualified to comment on the broader economic ramifications of this, but as a normal person navigating the world, it's pretty great!
* Advertising in the form of pasted posters, signs for nearby stores, etc.;
* "Large scale" advertising, e.g. the 60+ foot free-standing or roof-mounted pillars that are common in US cities and on roads;
* Mixed-digital advertising that usually has some kind of analytics or tracking mixed in (e.g. the much-maligned "digital front" displays that some convenience stores are installing[1])
To my mind, the first is mostly unobjectionable, the second is usually visually offensive (and should be price-adjusted to reflect the diminishing effect it has on the urban environment), and the third is civically offensive (and should be outright illegal).
[1]: https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/12/business/walgreens-freezer-sc...
Advertising is designed to make the person you are envy the person you could be if you bought their product. That is, it attempts to steal your satisfaction, and then offers to sell it back to you.
Quoting from memory, and I don't remember who I'm quoting, so I can't give credit where due. I didn't originate the thought, or even the wording. But it has stuck with me, because it explains what so much of advertising does.
If you are stuck in traffic or on a bus in an ugly urban hellscape, is a billboard really that bad? I'm sorry, they are not going to plant trees in Times Square to replace the billboards. Even in their own press photos, they are showing several billboards that are covering up even uglier buildings!
Maybe you are an enlightened individual and want to put an end to consumerism and society. In the meantime I personally still buy things and shop. And billboards are a pretty unobtrusive and low-tech way of getting my intention. I still regularly learn about new restaurants or attractions or museum exhibits because of well placed billboards.
I certainly thing some billboard types and content and locations are bad (digital billboards - yuck). But that seems like an argument for good policy making from your local government rather than a blanket opposition to all forms.
However, I think they're targeting everywhere in the UK, historic or not.
Advertising for local events should be allowed under some carve out but it would be nice if the vast majority of ads died as they’re not that. Here in SF for example when entering or leaving the city the ads are full of coke, Disney, Apple or Google phones, or various startups trying to show VCs their money is being put to good use (same thing film studios do in LA putting awards nominations and tv ada on billboards on the route to work/home of influential money people on a given project)
SF is actually the example I had in mind because they do a good job of keeping them away from the scenic areas - but the whole downtown core is already such a dump that I really don't mind the advertisements.
I think you are also discounting how weird SF ads are - as a visitor they are actually unique and interesting to me. One of the fun things about visiting different cities is seeing how unique the cultures are, and ads actually give you a good window into this.
Billboards don't only appear when traffic is stopped though. It's not worth the increased danger.
Also, I really don't think the presence of billboards is a common deciding factor in whether or not someone is looking at their phone. Maybe if they're driving in an otherwise featureless void, but I think people are either going to look at their phone or not, regardless of what's outside their car.
Regardless, your DoT or local authority probably already has a lot of rules in place about how visually distracting billboards are allowed to be, and which section of roads they are determined to be safe on. So they are already fairly highly regulated from a safety standpoint.
Great. High traffic areas are the most dangerous places for distractions.
> why they are implicitly more distracting than the myriad road signs, bumper stickers, car decals, etc that drivers already navigate.
I'll list the reasons:
1. Road signs are standardized in a given state, and they're designed to be extremely easy to understand at a glance, so their meaning can typically be understood without the driver having to actually read anything on them. They're also pretty close to where you should be looking already.
2. Bumper stickers and car decals are necessarily on the objects you're supposed to be watching most of the time. (But, yes, they can still be distracting.)
3. Billboards are often not in line-of-sight of the things you're trying to avoid crashing into, and can be wildly distracting. The fact that they're regulated for levels of visual distraction is hilarious news to me, having seen billboards in real life. Calling them "fairly highly regulated" feels disingenuous; others might say "barely regulated."
4. Having fewer distractions is less dangerous than having more distractions, so we should try to reduce distractions. We're not going to get rid of road signs, because that would be insane. We could get rid of bumper stickers, but they're orders of magnitude less common than billboards and they're less distracting and they typically don't have all the other negative effects of advertising that billboards do.
It's not just your opinion based on...
A) it stands to reason that if phones are distracting so are billboards which are literally designed to get your attention
B) a simple internet search yields all sorts of research into this topic supporting the common sense expectation.
As a community, we should strive for higher information commentary maybe?
https://usa.streetsblog.org/2022/05/02/study-distracting-roa...
The action of using your phone is distracting, not that phones are distracting. You can absolutely use your phone as a GPS. The process of interaction is the distracting part.
>literally designed to get your attention
The NIH article actually says literally the opposite, of what you're saying. Billboards aren't distracting enough to completely draw your attention.
>a simple internet search yields all sorts of research into this topic supporting the common sense expectation.
No... No it doesn't. As evidenced by the results you provided. One talks about safety billboards and the other literally says the opposite of your claim.
And I quote: "Generally, billboard-related distraction appeared to be minor and regulated by drivers as the demands of the driving task changed."
>As a community, we should strive for higher information commentary maybe?
Yes. You definitely should note just make un-appealable claim without knowing the reasons for it. Your argument that billboards are a safety hazard is just your opinion, that has more evidence against than for.
> However, this review’s findings suggest that this [billboards are not a distraction] may not be true in all cases. Future research should emphasize the tails of the distribution in addition to average cases, in terms of both the analysis of visual behavior and the complexity of driving tasks. Further research is also needed to understand the effects of billboard design, driver characteristics, and road and traffic context.
The amount of people who text & drive and don't get into any accidents as a result on the road is quite high. Yet we still recognize texting & driving as dangerous. And active billboards are much more distracting as per the NIH paper than passive ones. Lit up bright ones at night that are engaging in some way are going to be more distracting than passive ones during the day.
Do I need to explain that looking at a billboard and interacting with you phone are wildly different activities? Do we need to discuss the differences between terms passive and active?
Equating glancing at billboards(less than 1 sec) and texting(on average 5 seconds) - requires ignoring the basic principles behind those two actions.
Texting requires your visual attention, your fine motor functions and your mental abilities engaged.
Looking at a few words and an image requires considerably less engagement.
https://www.driversalert.com/10-terrifying-facts-about-texti...
> And active billboards are much more distracting as per the NIH paper than passive ones
Of course they are. But distracting and hazard are two very different things. Many things are distracting, but aren't a hazard.
And your other link actually shows how different are things on the road that require active attention(active safety notices) vs things that are just informative(signs and billboards).
And if you made a claim that video billboards are likely to be too distracting, instead of generalizing that all billboards are a safety hazard - I wouldn't even engaged. As it stands, your position of "all billboards are a safety hazard" is just an opinion - with evidence to the contrary.
Try providing some evidence of how "highly regulated" billboard distraction levels are and I might take this conversation seriously.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4411179/
> official road signs are easy to read at a glance
They aren't. Specially in the UK.
And you have any kind of conclusive evidence to this claim?
Do you really see the removal of advertising from public space as this much of a threat to your way of life? Your sarcastic remark about ending consumerism and society sounds quite hateful towards people who don't want to see advertising, whereas (speaking from myself at least) I feel no hate at all towards people who don't mind ads. My preference for not viewing ads comes purely from my own personal annoyance that I experience whenever I see them, it does not come from any kind of hate or dislike towards people like you who don't mind them, and I don't really want to change anyone's lifestyle.
X throughout the times were/are ads, black people, campaign billboards, crossdressing and Pride parades.
Every time someone says "it should be banned, because I don't want to see it in public" is eerily reminiscent of the arguments of homophobes that I hear all the time.
"I don't want to see" or "it offends me" must never be a reason for banning something. It's not sufficient.
Because no one can ever have an opinion that is opposite to you and your claims never require evidence to back them up.
Calling someone a troll, because you just throw out absurd claims expecting everyone to take your word for it - is quite arrogant.
It's interesting to me that you connect these things so strongly, as if anyone opposed to public ads are also opposed to all of modern commerce. I guess it's a sign of how pervasive the ad industry has become in certain areas, that it seems inseparable from normal business. Fortunately it is quite possible to have vibrant free markets in areas that are not plastered in corporate advertisements.
> We see the fight against billboards as part of a wider struggle for social, ecological and economic justice.
So to be completely fair, I am responding to the case that they are making that combatting billboards is just one piece of an intersectional fight against corporations and injustice.
Yes, it intrudes into a person's thought pattern with the explicit goal of selling you a product/service/idea. I'd much rather stare at a wall and continue with my thought or look at a work of art (which 99.99% of ads are not, imho).
> I'm sorry, they are not going to plant trees in Times Square to replace the billboards. Even in their own press photos, they are showing several billboards that are covering up even uglier buildings!
So why not put up a non-distracting work of art? Have ads become the only visual expression allowed in public?
It would also be a hub of technical information about the products and their reviews. Also information about companies operating on the market. Conduct, ownership structure, financial information, everything. Basically all the market information on a silver platter for every customer and business to take.
Yeah... I'll live with bad advertising, rather than pave the way to 1984.
Advertising is also a matter of freedom of speech. Political speech is absolutely advertising... and a business exists exclusively based on the ability to disseminate information about the existence of a business (aka advertising)
What is "commercial speech"?
It's one thing to talk about billboards, that take up public space... and advertising in general.
I really don't think this is true. What evidence leads you to believe that?
> Advertising in cities, from billboards to flyers to stickers is the only way to reach people directly
Most billboards are from [inter]national corporations. Local businesses usually rely on the most effective form of advertising, word-of-mouth. Some of the most successful local businesses in my city have literally never paid for advertising.
Lastly, your complaint is meritless because Adfree Cities is not campaigning to ban all conceivable forms of advertising. From TFA (well, the FAQ page):
> Why doesn’t Adfree Cities campaign against all kinds of advertising?
> Our focus is on creating neighbourhoods and cities free from corporate outdoor advertising such as billboards. There are specific problems with outdoor advertising as explained briefly above and in more detail here: The trouble with billboards. And there are unique opportunities for communities to reclaim these spaces for art, nature and local initiatives.
> Most billboards are from [inter]national corporations. Local businesses usually rely on the most effective form of advertising, word-of-mouth. Some of the most successful local businesses in my city have literally never paid for advertising.
Are they? From my experience, at least on roads here in the US, the majority seems to be realtors, ambulance chasing attorneys, restaurants/casinos/road-side attractions coming up, and various political/religious/group-affiliation advertising. Corporations make up some of course, but it's a lot more mixed than, say, TV ads.
What I never seem to see is local businesses I actually want to visit. The cool vintage stores, the goth stores, the retro game shops, the hole-in-the-wall Filipino restaurants, the local craft supply stores, the cat cafes, the weird toy stores, the artisan candy stores, the dubious bone and bone decor shops, the gay book stores, the Japanese import stores, the handmade ceramic planters store... you get the picture. The lifeblood of a city is not what's on its billboards.
The adjectives you used are the opposite of mass market. Thus mass-market advertising doesn't work, so those businesses don't spend money in those channels.
The ads that work on billboards are very high dollar services businesses, or multi-nationals who need to spend through budgets everywhere for neilsen scores.
For example: insurance, lawyers and RE agents - they need to build "trust" through name recognition so when you do decide to make that purchase/call, you call them first.
A retro game store billboard would be awesome - but how many people driving the interstate are interested in vintage games vs how many people will be buying a home in their lifetime?
There's nothing stopping any business from buying billboards, but the economics just don't make sense apart from the whole "getting your face on a billboard" schtick that's fun.
On the flip side, if you've ever been to a local sporting event like farm league baseball or local race track, you'll see all sorts of billboards for funky little local shops and services. That's cause the ads cost a couple hundred bucks and come with perks like tickets for your employees, and you're supporting your local community, so the ROI doesn't really matter.
Roadside billboards cost thousands per month and typically come with pretty high minimums.
I know why they don't advertise on billboards. My point is that billboards are not the life support of local business suggested by the comment I was responding to, because the local businesses that give a city character and community generally don't use billboards.
> For example: insurance, lawyers and RE agents - they need to build "trust" through name recognition so when you do decide to make that purchase/call, you call them first.
...Right. So in other words, the billboard is mostly deception, and it's probably not bringing value to the public.
Your experience of this will depend on where you're living.
When I lived in a 100,000 population city, the local theatres and museums weren't really big/organised enough to run billboard marketing campaigns and could fill their seats without. On the other hand, in a 500,000+ population city you were more likely to see such organisations marketing.
Places like theatres tend to have location-specific marketing needs, because if you're 90 minutes travel from the opera house you will not be attending a Tuesday evening performance that ends at 22:30*, and marketing it to you would be a waste of time.
I still hate city advertising though, and the way the ad infestation spreads once it's started.
* Yes, people will travel more than 90 minutes for a Christmas performance of The Nutcracker, as a special treat - perhaps even staying in a hotel. But if you're trying to keep your theatre open in months other than December, you've got to fill the seats. And of course, patrons who buy interval drinks can't drive home, further shrinking your core market...
You literally made that up, because that's just plain false.
Based on my anecdotal observations 99% of advertisements I see in my city are by gigantic international conglomerates: Coca Cola, Disney, H&M, HBO and so on. I don't recall seeing a local or small business advertising (ignoring signs on or near their own store front of course).
If anything it seems advertising works to entrench the existing players.
Just off the top of my mind the billboads that I remember seeing driving round Manhattan - RPM Raceway go-carts, HSS Hospital, a gentlemen's club, local news anchors...
You can still advertise in those areas, you just have to do it through mediums like bulletins, mailers, sponsorships, media and print -- things that are generally easier to avoid and opt-out of.
I.e. it's legal to walk into starbucks and tell people about your product but you can't pay someone else to do it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed_v._Town_of_Gilbert
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Austin_v._Reagan_Natio...
I grew up there, and seeing billboards other places was jarring.
It was wonderful and it's one thing I really miss.
Sure, their ads are more ethical, I guess, calling to action against fossil fuels is better than advertising for fossil fuels, I guess. But ethical ads are still ads, they clutter the landscape, they call for attention and are an attempt to influence people.
I understand that even anti-ad groups need to advertise themselves, but really, I would have preferred if they could show more actual ad removal and less ad replacement.
One strike and they're out. Spotify has been banned in my household ever since.
Highway billboards cause crashes [1]. In cities it kills pedestrians [2]. What we need is model legislation folks can introduce to their city councils. Not gushy nonsense, aimed at making participants feel good more than tangible effect, where the front-page call to action is to join a mailing list.
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31408362/
[2] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/46413392_Effects_of...
I didn’t realize until recently that almost all billboards are made of a thick plastic vinyl material.
I recently saw one of these billboards folded up on the ground before it went up. It’s just a giant chunk of plastic that I imagine ends up in some landfill somewhere.
I didn't realize how much the visual noise really does make a difference.
Next, let's do cars driving faster than 30mph. :D
What about ads inside airports? Bus stops? Transit stations?
Where will the money come from to fill in the budget gaps left by removing these ads?
If I'm at a local minor league baseball game, and see an ad for "Bill the plumber", how is that a problem? It's local community supporting local community spaces. If Bud Lite buys a spot next to them, great! More dollars for my local ballpark so they can stay open.
The nature of local, physical advertising is that the ad dollars stay (mostly)* local.
* Mostly because clearchannel manages most billboards on roadways around the country. They pay rent to landowners, who may or may not be local, but they also pay local taxes. So not perfect dollar retention.
Would it be possible to keep them out of a city.
No limit to the number of palms they could grease.
Who knows, governments might resort to antitrust law to stop them.
If advertisements get forbidden they could easily get replaced by "good things to do" monopoly gobernments. Namely, propaganda.
Also, ads make life for many people.
I think regulation is enough. Forbiding would be harmful IMHO as a whole.
What?
There are two places where ads remain: 1) Social media where the ads are integrated and not blocked (Facebook, YouTube in-video promos) 2) Billboards in cities and airports
#1 has gotten more aggressive lately. I'm not a fan, but I understand why it has happened. However, at least I can choose to avoid these sites if I wish.
#2, which is what the article is about, is unavoidable for me. I find billboards ugly, distracting, and annoying clutter. It's just visual "noise." What's worse is that the products targeted in #1 above are frequently relevant to me, and I have purchased them. But I cannot think of a single time I have ever made any purchase based on any billboard. I would love if more municipalities clamped down on these.
Whenever I tell people I prefer this road, they balk. When I tell them there's no billboards, they stop and think and realize that it's actually one of the nicest roads in the city. Parts of it are actually quite beautiful and forested.
I've seen a handful of billboards that were mildly entertaining. I've never seen a billboard that made me [edit to add: consciously] want to buy something, in my entire life, as far as I can recall. I've seen countless billboards that manipulated my emotions, showing me food or sex while I'm just trying to drive, purposefully distracting me. And countless more that just suck and are pointless. Among my many grievances with car-dependency, billboards aren't at the top of the list, but they're a very easy target because most people actually hate them as soon as they stop to think about it in my experience.
I don't know if that's the rule for all roads, or just for interstates. I don't know if it's for driver safety if they veer off the road, or for avoiding distraction, or just to limit advertising. But I like it.
I haven't worked out exactly why some exist, but almost none do. The law is here:
https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/title33.2/chapter12/
Regardless, the general feel of driving here is very different from many other states because of this rule. It's one of the first things I notice when I drive somewhere else in the US.
Dear Products,
I know me better than you. I’ll come find you WHEN I need you. In the meantime, please just sit tight and stay out of my way.
-Mr Consumption is Overrated
You can opt out of junk mail. Varies by area. Likely can be done by a "no junk" sticker, or by opting out via your postal service, or both. (A lot of fliers aren't distributed by postal service, but legally must obey no junk signs)
Email is trickier, but recently I've had success simply unsubscribing from absolutely everything with an unsubscribe link. I used to leave stuff in if it might be useful.
To my surprise I now receive very few junk emails per day.
>I know me better than you. I’ll come find you WHEN I need you. In the meantime, please just sit tight and stay out of my way.
All of the above said, ads actually work. It is possible of course they don't work on you, the reader of this comment. (Meaning anyone reading, not just the parent comment)
But ads really do work in boosting sales.
Physical mail I just go down and throw it all out every so often. I wrote the date down on my whiteboard once after checking it and I noted that I go roughly three months in between times when I checked my mail.
The amount of ads packed into an NBA basketball game on TV is startling and exhausting:
- each player's jersey
- arena walls
- courtside walls (tv screens)
- projected onto the court floor (updated each minute)
- on the side and top of the backboard
- most TV graphics ("Taco Bell play of the game")
- split-screen ads during free-throws
- traditional commercials during time-outsi noticed some pretty no-name companies on jerseys recently
makes me wonder how much it actually costs to get them to wear like a pin with my face on it for a few games
"did you see me at the knicks game last night? i was everywhere!"
In California the billboards are now predominantly cannabis and casinos.
I wonder if you can tell what a whole state is about just by looking at the billboards.
I would assume that people living in the city are so used to them that they don't even notice them.
Maybe one day you could wear AR goggles, and replace these ads by artworks?
(I literally saw that exact ad at the pentagon metro station. who buys a 30 million dollar engine upgrade off of a metro ad?)
Get outside of these bubbles, though, and it's all lawyers, casinos, car dealerships, and sex shops.
I imagine you can use something like a Flipper to get a similar "put-outer" device nowadays but I haven't come across anyone using it in that way.
> Disclaimer: This product is sold for the exclusive private use of the buyer on their own equipment . Use under adult supervision. For external use only. Side effect may include decreased anxiety, increased social skills, increased cognitive ability, increased sense of well being. The above statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. Effective personal choices are the sole responsibility of each individual user of this device.
https://blog.flipper.net/infrared/
> To use the Universal Remote mode, navigate Infrared -> Universal library and select the type of device you want to control.