Not so long ago, I was traveling around Switzerland. During my time in the country, there was always something just a little off, and I couldn’t place what it was.
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.
Hawaii has a "no billboards" law [0] (as do Maine, Vermont and Alaska). I think this is a cleaner, better statement than "ad-free city," which is obviously far overstating the case and paradoxically doesn't even ban billboards (they're still allowed for non-corporate advertising).
Yeah I've heard several people report similar "little off but I love it" feelings when visiting here in Maine. The obnoxious billboards always bugged me around Chicago as a kid, but my kids enjoy the novelty when traveling. Similar with TV: we got a digital bunny ear and they were all excited about the commercials, as they've seen so few in their lives (YouTube Premium, streaming, discs/drives, etc.).
Tokyo is jam-packed with ads and loads of neon. When I lived there, I loved the visual effect. It brought the city to life and visually reaffirmed the economic bedrock of any modern city: Commerce.
In California, billboards are banned in Orange County (where I grew up). I left Orange County almost two decades ago and all the billboards along the freeways are still jarring.
The award of the contract for the outdoor advertising space (bus shelters, roadside space) in my city was tied to providing and maintaining a cheap metro-area wide bike sharing scheme. For 30ish euros a year I get unlimited 45 minute trips on bikes that are widely available, well maintained, and easy to use. In 2022 there were more than 10 million trips taken on these hire bikes and nearly 84,000 annual subscribers.
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.
We have something similar and it was a terrible deal. The city still had to pay a boatload of money to set up the system, but it's proprietary so we can only "buy" more stations and bikes from the same company. They, of course, refuse to sell at a reasonable price, so for every new station, more ad space is created and given to them. The term of the contract, which is 25 years, is also insanely long and far longer than the maximum we allow for such contracts normally (5 or 10 years).
And I won't even go into the corruption that got them the tender in the first place... Fuck JCDecaux!
The same thing in my city with jcd bikes: no new stations in a decade, only a handful of bikes available, bike stop density nowhere near anything I've seen in a large city in Southern France. Meanwhile, every bus stop, every street corner or prominent billboard is owned by jcd.
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.
It's not a good trade, there shouldn't be a monopoly on public ads, local businesses should be able to reach consumers without having to go through a monopolist that captures all of the value.
The ad space exists and the city owns all the ad space. They either get in the business of pricing it and selling it themselves, or they contract that business out. In this case, a condition of the contract was you have to pay for the bike scheme.
I mean this appears to be a similar model as a utility. Right? Basically a legal monopoly with a set of restrictions. I don't see how it's really a bad thing.
> This bike share scheme is only possible because the city traded away its outdoor ad space.
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.
> immediately bought an essentially unrelated service
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.
>This bike share scheme is only possible because the city traded away its outdoor ad space.
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.”
I wonder how much this bike contract actually takes to maintain vs how much the holder gets in advertisements. Even if near flat even, which feels unlikely as why bother holding the contract then, it's still a way with more overhead than just funding the bike program.
I've never understood why billboards are legal. They're distracting and placed along the roads and highways. In my driving course I remember being told that even so much as talking to a passenger or adjusting the volume of the radio can be dangerous so you should be paying 100% attention to the road.
So why are billboards, things that are specifically built, along roads, to draw my attention legal?
Because advertisers think their concerns over their profits override literally everything. How will the poor corporations make money if they can't flood people's senses with bullshit information they don't want or need?
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.
People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.
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.
I got the same lecture in driver's ed, but let's be honest: that was never accurate. It's perfectly fine to talk to someone while you're driving, or to adjust the volume on the radio real quick. I imagine that the lectures given to teens learning to drive are motivated by the fact that new drivers need to focus more, and are stubborn so they need to have the point driven home harder. For a responsible adult driver, neither conversation nor radio adjustments nor billboards are a dangerous distraction.
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.
I wholeheartedly agree. Furthermore, we now have ads that are giant flashy LED screens at the busiest intersections.
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).
I understand why people hate advertising but if I’m honest, I don’t agree with having an “adfree city”.
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).
It dont think that Tokyo picture is full of ads. While I can't read Japanese, from my trip there, those were mostly listing the stores in the building.
I haven't been to Tokyo, however, could it depend on the local focus of the ads?
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).
I don't know. I think there are differences. Like ads on the front of a store (advertising things sold in said store), vs ads when you go to use the gosh darn toilet and a video starts talking to you while you're sitting there.
Ads in commercial buildings aren't actually ads, they're just information. You walked into a store to see products so the store is merely showing you what you want to see, organized so you can find what you want. Nothing wrong with a sign showing people the name of a business on its own building either, those are actually useful, even for navigation and orientation.
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 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.
agreed. I even enjoy reading the ads on the trains in Tokyo. I find out about all kinds of random stuff. There are ads for events, museums, concerts, festivals, condos, other train lines, manga, video games, etc...
You don't need ads for that, it could just be art. You could enjoy vibrant artistic billboards without anyone trying to shove products down your throat.
To be honest, i have experienced socialist and communist countries, and i never want to go back to this cold, adfree world with its purely functional esthetics. I can understand the aversion for the Ad-Overload, but no Ads, nah, i want it colorful, shiny and blinking. :)
They will appear elsewhere because fundamentally: we want them. Now I can steelman the argument against ads by likening them to parasites or drugs. The "want" can then be put into question. Any way, the bottom line is that simple exposure to ads is not enough for their efficacy and continued existence. Someone has to actually buy the stuff too, and that's a choice which is up to the person. Are we so incapacitated we can't just take some personal responsibility and resist in quiet? I find this revolting mob strategy distasteful, honestly.
I've been on a tear blocking absolutely all ads in my life, and it has made my life so much more serene and peaceful. The one thing I cannot do anything about is ads in the physical space, which sucks, so this initiative is right up my alley. I'm not in UK, but all I can say is godspeed to this initiative.
I've had friends observe that I'm sometimes extremely oblivious to public signage that gives important information that I should really be paying attention to, or looking around lost to figure out my way when a directing sign is right in my face.
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've had the pleasure of visiting a few cities/countries without much (if any) physical advertising/billboards, it's a change that's both incredibly jarring and incredibly pleasant!
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!
Seems like a laudable goal to me, but there are degrees here:
* 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).
Readit News
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.
[0] https://movingtokona.com/why-there-are-no-billboards-in-hawa...
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/politics/geneva-throws-out-ban-...
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.
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.
Also with monopolist it is really easy to keep some standards, quality of the ads.
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.
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.”
Deleted Comment
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...
Dead Comment
So why are billboards, things that are specifically built, along roads, to draw my attention legal?
So let's go adfreecities!
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 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.
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).
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).
Imagine if NYC banned all visual advertising? One of the most iconic sites of NYC would just disappear.
Tokyo is visually interesting so could get an exemption. But ads look much uglier in other places, here's a sample:
https://imgur.com/a/6AOWmdC
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.
Ever thought of that?
Dead Comment
Can you imagine another possible scenario?
> 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.
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.
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.
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...