Should billboard advertising be banned?

I live in São Paulo (the city mentioned in the article) and I always find it amusing how you can tell exactly where São Paulo ends and the neighboring city (Guarulhos) begins just by the billboards.

Here’s São Paulo’s welcome sign coming from Guarulhos. There are lot of billboards before it, but exactly none after.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/Dw8AFJS2sNRW27PL9?g_st=ic

“Advertisement is the rich asking for more money. They disfigure their towns in order to decorate their houses.”

— G.K. Chesterton

The correct amount of advertising in a society is not zero - we all like finding out about things which will actually help us - but it is not unbounded either. The advertising machine acts according to its incentives, and will not rest until every spare surface, every quiet moment, every gap between thoughts is up for auction. It must therefore be restrained so that other uses of space can flourish.

Santa Barbara County in California bans billboards, and Santa Barbara city has even stricter sign laws.

It’s a relief to be free from the visual pollution billboards create and there are no downsides unless you own a billboard.

In a more urban setting, I don’t hate billboards. The absence of billboards is a definite increase in quality of life.

It’s pretty weird that we allow advertising to attempt to distract you while you’re doing the most dangerous thing you generally do daily: driving.

At a gut level, I would love for outdoor advertising to be banned in my city. I resent the constant intrusion into my mind when I encounter them on the street.

That said, I do recognize that from the perspective of advertisers and consenting property owners having the (assumed) right to do trade however they wish, this may not be a fair or reasonable policy to enact. Truth be told, I haven't thought about this very much.

But the thing that I'm MOST interested in is what will be the secondary consequences of banning outdoor advertising? If advertisers cannot use billboards or posters, how will the space change and where will their behavior be compensated for elsewhere? Are there any unwanted secondary side-effects that might occur do to this prohibition? Like online advertising intensifying, or paid sponsorships for online content creators, or perhaps something completely different?

They should be banned, and not because people are automatons, but because advertisements are invariably objectively distracting and increasingly garish as firms attempt to outcompete one another for attention. It's really just a question of what kind of society we want to live in - my own view is that people should have the option not to be bombarded by hawkers, whether it's homeless people, Mormons, or corporate shills, while they move about public spaces.

I went to Cuba and there was no advertising allowed on the roads. It was really refreshing, and it made our excursions feel a lot more engaging. The government did have some propaganda billboards on the roads, but it was ridiculous stuff like Uncle Sam getting punched in the face. I found those pretty entertaining…

> Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for another trade organisation, the Advertising Association, says that "all advertising plays a crucial role in brand competition, drives product innovation, and fuels economic growth".

You know what actually drives product innovation? Not being able to lean on advertising to drive sales, so you're actually forced to improve your product and get the benefit of positive word of mouth instead.

It took a few days for me to put my finger on it, but lack of advertising was something that stood out to me when I visited Cuba almost a decade ago. Your visual environment has space to breathe. Although, another difference in Cuba was the presence of regime propaganda in some of that visual space.

Growing up in Chicago's suburbs, the highways are awash in billboards. I never noticed it until living elsewhere. But in the town I grew up in, public ads were much less common.

It's interesting the ways in which the commercial exploitation of the visual environment plays out differently in different societies. But I'm a fan of far less advertising in public spaces, where you can't really consent. And I think it's interesting that the ways in which the internet attention economy lays bare the commodification of attention might bring more awareness of that mm dynamic in contexts where it has been underexamined.

This article seems to want this to look like a unified movement, but it seems more like a bunch of small groups in different areas who aren't working together, and may not even agree with each other if you get them in a room together. The issue-specific people ("no car ads!", "no gambling ads!") may not go to bat for someone else's issue, and may look at the "no ads whatsoever" people as extremists who distract from their specific cause.

I guess my point is this seems like a bunch of weakly-related data points, rather than a strong signal of a movement. Too bad, since I'd love to see drastically fewer ads in public spaces.

I want fewer signs in general. Fewer billboards, fewer road signs, fewer placards posted by control-freak authoritarians.

I drove in Scandinavia a few years ago. They have a lot fewer road signs. Speed limits are by default and drivers are supposed to know them: 50kph in town. 80kph on rural roads. 100kph on motorways. Only if limits are different are there signs.

The signs they do have are mostly iconic, so other than street names, you don't have to read words. That is also more pleasing to the eye somehow.

> These ads are in the public space without any consultation about what is shown on them.

> This would also apply to the sides of buses, and on the London Underground and other rail and metro systems

This is a good point. The other arguments were much less persuasive.

I visited São Paulo before and after the ban (I'm not sure if the ban is still in effect). The difference was staggering. The city was more alive with people. You could see more, you could feel more. The sky was clearer, people were less distracted, it was great.

I'd be quite alright with banning (or at least heavily regulating) illuminated billboards. Those are indeed very distracting, and the light pollution concern is valid.

Billboards in general, though? I live in a place with lots of billboards and they're pretty easy to ignore. I don't really see the upside here to what would constitute a freedom of speech/expression infringement.

I think the more reasonable emphasis should be on regulating the light escaping from a property, not micromanaging the property itself. Limit the lumens or whatever in various protected directions (into the sky, onto roadways, etc.) and that would address the entirety of the actually-valid concerns.

I lived in a place where they were banned and roadside signage highly regulated and it was awesome, some much less visual clutter and noise. Every time I would travel I’d be shocked at how much advertising there was.

Rather than a ban, would a very large tax for any ad spend work as a policy? This would seem to both reduce the overall number of ads, and force advertisers to allocate more resources to making better targeted ads that are more profitable per impression. My opposition to ads is not that they have no utility, but rather there is not sufficient compensation for the human attention that they (nearly) freely exploit and waste.

IMHO it's misleading and unhelpful to talk strictly about advertising. Instead we should be talking about marketing, for which advertising is one (hugely significant) part.

Marketing is a key component of building, growing and maintaining a business. There is no "build it and they will come". Many an interesting product has died on the vine because of poor or lacking marketing.

Marketing is a two-way street. It's about understanding who your potential customers are, how large your market is, who your competitors are, what is important to your potentiaal customers, who buys your products, why they buy them and so on. The other side, which includes advertising, is making people aware of your product or brand. It may include a direct call to action (eg "buy this widget now") or it may just be creating a perception for your brand. A lot of Coca-Cola and even Apple advertising falls into this category.

It's really disappointing to see some of the comments on this thread. Comments like "I built a business with no advertising so you don't need it either". The only way this is likely true is if you sell to a small number of businesses and your initial customers were former colleagues or otherwise known to you via networking. This is not representative of how business growth and marketing works and shouldn't be taken as such.

There can and should be limits on advertising. When, where, what, that sort of thing. I personally think that advertising in children's shows for example should be banned. So should pharmaceuticals (a uniquely US problem). Some things are understandably heavily restricted (eg gambling, alcohol, tobacco, cannabis).

But a ban on billboards? What does this achieve? The objections seem to be largely aesthetic. That seems highly performative.

> He points to the impact of Transport for London's ban on such adverts since 2019 across its entire network of tube and overground trains, buses and trams. A study last month found that the policy had prevented almost 100,000 obesity cases.

How do you measure that even remotely accurately? It's certainly not as if there was some sort of confounding factor between then and now.

No. But cities should have strict policies around where and how it’s possible to set up billboards.

In the end I’m all for advertising money spent on ads that aren’t tracking me.

I’d switch the question around and ask: are there enough ads on billboards, bus stops? If not then maybe we haven’t regulated online ads enough to make the billboards attractive.

Yes. They're a disgrace.

We did it in São Paulo, Brazil a long time (15 years?) ago. It was a relief and I'm always a bit bothered when I'm on cities that allow it. It might be the case that some places in some cities should still keep it, but otherwise I'm still all for it

There are no billboards in Maui from what I could tell, which was quite pleasant. From a further search it looks like Hawaii doesn't stand for billboards at all, nor do Alaska, Maine, or Vermont.

I'll be the controversial one here and say... I actually like billboard advertising?

Most of them are not being built in particularly scenic areas, and they add a lot of visual interest. Especially as a chronic user of public transit, I have SO MUCH appreciated having something to look at in a subway or bus stop. Each city and location has their own flavor, and it can actually be kind of fun to see what is in other cities/countries.

In the past I would say billboards are the scourge, but other than nuisance they do not harm me.

On the other hand online advertising...

Billboards are pop up window ads of real life. We solved the problem online. Lets get rid of billboards too.

I don't like the massive billboards, but I do support smaller scale advertising like at bus stops.

Bangalore is another city that recently (a few years ago) banned almost all billboards. And this has been a change very much for the better.

Just like your browser adblocker - you don't recognise noise & visual pollution until you live without it.

Yes. Next question?

Mass advertising has a big tragedy of the commons problem. Attention is limited, and every mass ad, digital or otherwise, takes attention away from any other mass ad. (I distinguish mass ads from advertisements for cigars in Cigar Magazine).

One of the nice things about traveling on the Autobahn is the dearth of billboards. Basically only PSAs about drink driving or wearing a seatbelt, which I think we could do without too (the signs, not the seatbelts).

There's a big difference between passing a law banning all billboard advertising (including those who erect billboards on their own property) and banning it on publicly owned land/properties.

Billboards are depressing, especially in the countryside. It feels like a form of theft of my attention. They hurt everyone but a small group of people, but we still can't seem to ban them.

It doesn't bother me. I have more important stuff to worry about.

Am the only one who actually enjoys billboard advertising and bright signage? That's one of my favorite things about Hong Kong, NY Times Square, etc.

They don’t need to be, because they are obsolete. Online accounts for most. And in-person are going to change to drones / smart billboards.

I think ads should be mutually benefitial, for those who see ads and those who put ads. TV commercial is a shining example.

Billboard only serves for those who put it.

Yes. Public spaces should be unpolluted by advertising

I wonder if they cause car accidents. There is some on the highway here with hard to read text. But just the billboard might be distracting enough.

I live in Boulder where billboards are banned. It makes a huge difference towards a more peaceful life where the space and sky are open and free.

Yes. Although it's difficult to define, I feel that the default public space should be unpolluted by advertising/solicitations.