I think it's related to the K shaped economy. The country is no longer being built for the middle class, which is concerning.

"But there is something a little...alienating about advertising that's not meant for you."

The vast majority of advertising isn't for any specific individual. I've no interest in perfumes, fashion, electric cars or jewellery that feature on boards nearby and I've no idea who the celebrity endorsers are, but why should I care?

But many modern people have a compulsion that they need to be involved in everything, all the time, and anything they don't understand is either mocked or protested. It's a form of entitled self-importance, but what's the cause?

Same with Barcelona FC's stadium. Originally called "Estadi del Barcelona", a new nickname became popular enough that the members voted to rename it to "Camp Nou". That makes sense to me, the ones who are there and members, get to decide the name. Cue 2022: Spotify (Swedish/American company?) buys the rights to the name, so now it is supposedly "Spotify Camp Nou" which is used absolutely everywhere on marketing materials, buildings and clothing, yet no one actually calls it that nor does Spotify have much to do with Barcelona or the club.

I think it's alienating because people were told all their lives that their commercial impact is actual power, that they can "vote with their wallet". That has never been true, but now they're not even lying to us anymore.

Regular people have no relevant political power and no relevant economic power, and the people in power have stopped pretending that we do.

The world is not for us, we don't even matter enough to have billboards advertising to us anymore.

for me it's the opposite of alienating - it's like the ads have been banished to some niche sphere and I can live my regular life in the city unbothered by advertising.

Heinz just sells diabetes & fatty liver disease and packages it as a staple of american cuisine.

Keep in mind that marketing is not just trying to teach you about someone you're unaware of, but is also in part about assuring you (and your boss) that you're about to make the right choice when their sales team is already talking to you, and even in part about ensuring that you (and your boss) continue to feel confident that you did make the right choice (or alternatively make you have doubts about having picked the competitor) after you made the buy.

Making their sales peoples job easier, in particular, can be a lot cheaper than getting the marketing on its own to sell someone on you. They want you to go "oh, yes, FooBar Inc, I recognise that name" instead of your reaction being "who?!?".

A lot of marketing without calls to action fall in the latter two categories. In that case they don't need to tell you who they are. They just need you to notice that they're there enough that they seem like a player that is a good choice. You don't even necessarily want to come across as caring too much about explaining who you are - you just want to portray the silent confidence of someone buyers should already know.

(I have no idea whether the specific billboards you're talking about succeed at this)

In the SF tech scene they talk about this -- startups say they will put up a billboard for one CTO.

I don't even think that's an exaggeration. I watched a YouTube video about a startup that wanted to land a major client, figured out the CTO's commute, and put up billboards along the way.

Then they called the guy and he told them "I see your ads everywhere." They had an in.

The economics likely make sense when a contract is easily worth tens of millions of dollars. They're trying to create the perception that they're established in the mind of one person.

I sort of look at it as putting a flag on the moon. Billboards are how tech companies claim ownership of SF and the tech sphere, any consumer influence is incidental.

I remember seeing an advertising exec talk about spending more money in the area the execs lived so they felt the impact of the advertising, regardless of how effective the spend actually was. This is likely more of the same - making the investors and C-Suite get warm fuzzies.

More ego than practical.

The most fun one is the Metro stations near the Pentagon, where often the ads will be for fighter jet engine upgrades.

They must work, because they're buying the ad space for about three relevant people.

The issue is that in most cities, most people are involved in the major industry or know people who are. Casino dealers, farm workers, etc.

But there aren't very many blue collar tech jobs beyond security and the cafeterias. It undoubtedly feels like an invasive species for much of the lower middle class, who's been here longer than the tech workers.

> If you drive through farm country, all the billboards are about the local cash crop.

Have you ever driven through farm country? I do fairly regularly (on an interstate). There's like one billboard for a (cattle) vet on my route. Most ads are for restaurants, healthcare, and the regular stuff.

Bold of you to assume they actually have products ;)

I didn’t ever expect to see Chat Pile mentioned here. Their music captures this sentiment perfectly though.

Great performers, great band

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You might like this prank billboard that’s up: https://www.sfgate.com/sf-culture/article/prank-san-francisc...

The 280 freeway on the Peninsula in the Bay Area has banned billboards, and it is quite a pleasant drive.

Hard agree. Once you drive on a highway with no billboards (e.g. outside Seattle on I-5) you realize how much mental space they take up when you go back.

Muir Woods is right there.

It doesn't sound like it used to be any better. Maybe we don't need to complain about AI destroying things that already sucked, like billboards or Linkedin.

And at the turn of the century it was all about dot coms.

Yes. Billboards that condition you to stop looking at them sound awesome.

You can't in california, actually.

While you can generally restrict new ones, you can't eliminate existing ones without basically paying out the lost revenue+etc to whoever is running it.

At least I could usually tell what a web 2.0 company actually did. With AI nearly being a commodity at this point, AI billboards are like seeing ads for different brands of table salt.

There are a lot of Monaco billboards up now which made me laugh.