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> The primary thing that makes advertisements disagreeable is their irrelevance. That's not true. We don't hate billboards because of their irrelevancy. We hat

• socalgal2 1y ago
  > We don't hate billboards because of their irrelevancy. We hate billboards because they're giant ugly attention grabbers that make the world look worse for everybody in exchange for making someone money. If the billboards were all about driving-related products, they'd still suck. I like billboards when I'm driving down an interstate and I want to decide if I should get off at the next stop and I want to know what food options there are. (example: Driving down I5 from SF to LA). I like billboards when they tell me about an attraction coming up. (Winchester House has a billboard) I like billboards when they advertize concerts/entertainers. (Driving down the I15 from Ontario to Oceanside there are ads for who's playing at Yaamava (https://www.yaamava.com/yaamava-theater https://www.yaamava.com/yaamava-theater), Pala (https://www.palacasino.com/entertainment/upcoming-concerts/ https://www.palacasino.com/entertainment/upcoming-concerts/), etc...
• grepfru_it 1y ago
  Nothing is wrong with billboards, I can look the other way. When the billboards show up on my dashboard and I have to stare at it before I can turn off my exit then we have problems I don’t mind watching a video with an ad. My child and I can preoccupy ourself. When it’s a 90 second ad we are forced to watch just to watch a 45 second video I’m gonna make certain we don’t watch that ad
  • nielsbot 1y ago
    Why should I have to look the other way? It's the billboard that's an imposition, an intrusion, and a nuisance. (Especially when there are multiple) https://www.amusingplanet.com/2013/07/sao-paulo-city-with-no-outdoor.html https://www.amusingplanet.com/2013/07/sao-paulo-city-with-no...
  • wiseowise 1y ago
    > Nothing is wrong with billboards. Elaborate.
    • freedomben 1y ago
      Benefit of the doubt that perhaps that was the entirety of the comment at the time you posted this reply, but they did elaborate if you could take the time to read the whole thing: > Nothing is wrong with billboards, I can look the other way. When the billboards show up on my dashboard and I have to stare at it before I can turn off my exit then we have problems > I don’t mind watching a video with an ad. My child and I can preoccupy ourself. When it’s a 90 second ad we are forced to watch just to watch a 45 second video I’m gonna make certain we don’t watch that ad
• sandworm101 1y ago
  >> that make the world look worse for everybody in exchange for making someone money. There are places where billboards act as rather effective sound barriers, shielding quiet neighborhoods from road noise.
  • FranzFerdiNaN 1y ago
    Then build a sound barrier , no need for an advertisement on them. Or decorate it with art if you want to make them less ugly.
  • wiseowise 1y ago
    Found marketing director of an ad agency.
    • freedomben 1y ago
      > Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.[1] > Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.[1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      • wiseowise 1y ago
        It's a joke, calm your knickers.
  • anon7000 1y ago
    I highly doubt a billboard is thick or dense enough to effectively block freeway sound. It’s not like you have a seamless wall of billboards “protecting” a neighborhood
    • rascul 1y ago
      It'll block some. It's not generally big enough to be effective.
• balanc 1y ago
  [flagged]
  • swiftcoder 1y ago
    > That’s not how the economy works. Kind of seems like how the economy works quite a lot of the time
    • parineum 1y ago
      How do those people end up making money if nobody wants what they are selling.
      • nehal3m 1y ago
        In the case of advertising that is the million dollar question. Determining the relationship between ad spend and revenue is next to impossible, whatever bullshit ad companies feed you to get you to spend more on ads.
• AlecSchueler 1y ago
  > We don't hate billboards because of their irrelevancy. We hate billboards because they're giant ugly attention grabbers If you read the rest of the paragraph it becomes clear that this is what was meant by irrelevant.
  • nehal3m 1y ago
    It’s probably stretching the meaning of the word, I think obtrusive would fit better.
    • chongli 1y ago
      No it’s using the common usage of the word irrelevant rather than the ad industry term of art. In common usage, almost all ads are irrelevant unless they simply help you find what you were already looking for (like a search ad leading to the exact website you were searching for). The ad that convinces you to buy something you hadn’t thought of before (while watching a video related to that topic) would be considered relevant by the ad industry. But that’s still irrelevant in common usage because you were watching a video, not shopping.
• Defletter 1y ago
  Steel-manning the argument, near where I live, it's not that uncommon to see small to moderately sized advertisements along the road, such as a sign outside/near the entrance of a farm that's selling eggs, meat, etc. I am wholly unopposed to this. In fact, I'm very supportive of this, and used them to find a farm to buy local honey from. Whereas the stereotypical massive slabs whose advertisements get wallpapered on, I think those are distracting menaces, particularly if the primary way you see them is by driving.
  • dietr1ch 1y ago
    On a few nice towns here there's no regular advertisements, but shops are allowed to have nice wooden signs matching the aesthetics of the town signs. You can still find your way around, and discover things, but looking around feels like you are finding things instead of looking at things yelling at you to find them.
  • Terr_ 1y ago
    In Washington state, the law is that signs along the highway have to be things you can actually purchase in the same property. I think that rule helps strike a decent compromise: Adjacent local businesses can draw attention to themselves, but it blocks the business-plan of erecting a forest of billboards to auction off, flogging cell-phone providers or prescription drugs etc. https://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=47.42.040 https://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=47.42.040
    • exegete 1y ago
      Have other states adopted this? Definitely would change things in NJ.
  • macintux 1y ago
    Similarly, I’ve found numerous small businesses/attractions thanks to highway billboards while traveling. Yes, I find billboards tedious and a nuisance, but I’m happy with the tradeoff. Except digital billboards, especially those that can switch to blinding white backgrounds at night. Those can rot in hell.
• sdeframond 1y ago
  > If the billboards were all about driving-related products Well, I don't complain about road signs.
  • onion2k 1y ago
    Here in the UK we have several campaigns for reducing 'street clutter', which includes excessive use of road signs.
  • ptero 1y ago
    The road signs are also unwelcome eye sores. However, they provide a lot of value by achieving safer road traffic so we tolerate them. That value still needs to be compared and evaluated for delivering information vs delivering annoyance. If information were delivered by giant, flashing, multicolored road signs every 50 meters the answer would be different. My 2c.
    • sdeframond 1y ago
      Precisely. Thank you. Road signs are relevant so we dont complain about them despite being an ugly eyesore.
      • ptero 1y ago
        We don’t complain not because road signs, in addition to being an eye sore, are relevant to our current activity, but because they provide significant value. While relevance has some correlation to value, that correlation is pretty weak; it is easy to find examples of high relevance and very negative value. We should not conflate those. Your opponent (with whom I agree) argued that the problem with most YT ads and billboards is negative value. Which will stay even if google makes them relevant. My 2c.
        • sdeframond 1y ago
          It seems we have a slightly different definition of 'relevant'. Regardless, we all agree: roadsigns are ugly but ok, billboards are just plain bad.
• derangedHorse 1y ago
  > If we liked them, we'd seek them out, and we'd call them something else, like "movie trailers" or "Super Bowl ads." I like these things but I do not seek them out.
  • Sophira 1y ago
    Many people do, though. I've heard people say proudly that they "only watch the Super Bowl for the ads".
• lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y ago
  > If the billboards were all about driving-related products, they'd still suck. To be clear, this is my primary point because I’m driving, not shopping. Something that gets close to maybe agreeable (I would still dislike it) would be an advertisement for a gas/charging station on a long highway. But even then we already have official roadsigns that only show logos and are otherwise relatively unobtrusive. Similar ones for fast food, actually. Such signs seem agreeable given there is some relevance (I legitimately might be low on gas/battery charge/food satiation levels in a context which I am actually likely to have a specific product need from one or more of the advertised businesses) and they are small enough to be ignorable when they are not actually relevant. The biggest issue I think about with that is how a business gets themselves on the sign but it’s probably not that hard once they are operating next to a highway exit. (I loathe advertisements, so when I say “agreeable” I mean something like “not wholly disagreeable”.)
• GuB-42 1y ago
  If you saw a giant, attention grabbing billboard for something you are looking for, you wouldn't hate it. In the context of roads, these are businesses putting their signs on the side of the road. For example I usually find billboards/signs pointing to the nearest supermarket, restaurant or gas station to be useful, because that's the kind of thing I may want do do when I am driving, and I am getting useful information out of them. Driving-related products like tires are annoying on a billboard on the side of the road because I am obviously not going to look at my tires while I am driving, and it is usually not something you have an urgent need for. They are however relevant (and therefore less annoying) in a gas station, where you can check your tires as you are filling up your tank. It may even give you the idea of checking tire pressure, which is a good thing. One of the most clever driving-related ad was a letter I received from the garage I did car maintenance with, reminding me a couple of weeks before the next scheduled maintenance that it was to be done (with, of course, an offer on their part). It was useful, yet 100% an ad. And yeah, we usually call things "ads" when they are annoying and by some other word when they are not, and advertisers tend to avoid the word for this reason. Calling it "sponsored" for instance. But it doesn't change that fact.
  • fluidcruft 1y ago
    I think you are complaining about the signs that happen inside cities particularly on roads where traffic gets backed up and slow. Beyond that it's gas/food/hotels/motels/tourist attractions... and religious speech. But in urban areas where it's AC repair, plumbers, injury lawyers or whatever lets be real: you're not missing much of a view.
  • antisol 1y ago
    > If you saw a giant, attention grabbing billboard for something you are looking for, you wouldn't hate it. Yes, I would. When I'm looking for something, I search for it until I find it, and then after that I'm not looking for it anymore. I don't go for a drive through the countryside in the hopes that system76 have put up a billboard which blocks the view of the countryside but shows me the specs for their latest laptop model.
    • 1y ago
• stickfigure 1y ago
  > keeping it from us until they we do something we don't want to do (pay for the service). Fixed that for you.
  • scrps 1y ago
    I pay for youtube with generous monthly donations to ad-block devs and list maintainers... Also how about all the ads on paid services now? Oh and I pay for plenty of services just not from vampires like youtube who rip off the actual talent and hold their audience captive. Arrr Matey, the sails may have been luffin but they be full again!