“We thought the floating pop-up billboard showing you a preview of what’s inside when you glance at a building was a great feature as you walk down times square”
> a static ad more akin to a billboard than a tracking device
The sad part is that you assume that modern day billboards aren't tracking you. All you need is a camera, a tiny computer and some AI. Once walked by a fully electronic billboard where the slideshow crashed, the log it displayed listed everything it could identify about people passing by, age, gender, height, hair color, emotional state, ... .
> I hope that signs and signals can most fade away. Imagine walking through a city without street signs or advertisements or stoplights
Will that get us a Black Mirror episode where no door or amenity will function until you put the lenses in? LargeCorp was concerned at the potential loss of trade so lobbied for a city bylaw requiring them. Or perhaps the Netflix Anon movie where all buildings are covered with 100' high virtual ads?
Don't get me wrong I'd love to get back to a built environment usually only seen in older photos where every surface isn't required to be a marketing opportunity. I just suspect somewhere along the way to this beautiful future there'll be a bait and switch. Cue uBlock for Lens(tm).
"While the sphere looks fantastic now as a giant eyeball, emoji or pumpkin, this isn’t what the exterior will be ultimately used for. It’ll reportedly be used to show ads, charging clients up to $650,000 a week. This makes it the most expensive billboard in the world."
Putting a giant advertisement ball into a residential era of London sounds like a Black Mirror episode. Vegas, I get it, the entire city is an exercise in vice, light pollution, gauche architecture and terrible ways to spend money but you can't do that to London.
I hope and think it's fairly likely whatever planning board is responsible doesn't actually wink this through.
For context, this type of advertising falls into "digital out of home" or DOOH. DOOH is going to be the next big thing (connected TV like roku/etc is the current big thing). Consider how antiquated a normal billboard is, when you could make it digital and get many more features.
This vendor has a cool map you can see of all their screens. Most of them are the small screens on gas stations/stores/etc, but some are billboards. They recently signed a deal to put digital signage on top of ubers and taxis (but not inside the car). I'm not affiliated but attended a pitch of theirs.
It already bled into reality. Look at this pic: https://l450v.alamy.com/450v/2g8fn09/an-mta-digital-advertis... It's an MTA customer information billboard in NY: 5% information, 95% advertisement. On this %5 useful space, they have to roll different arrivals, because it is too small to show them all at once. I really wish to the ones, who designed this, to have a lot of money they have to spend on medications.
I saw this video on my youtube recommended and man am I glad they're figuring out how to phase out billboarding. One of my pet peeves in video games is pop-in and billboarding of far objects.
> Do you close your eyes walking around town any time you go by a store front, you see a roadside ad, a bench covered in ads, a taxi backseat, public toilets, any sports events and jerseys, TV, newspapers, magazines, radio...
There will be open-source AR projects to block those, too, one day
"Over the next for years you're going to see a massive drop in the effectiveness and reach of ads in real life"
The good news is that most forms of traditional ads are only mildly calibrated to what purpose they are supposed to achieve. With the exception of coupons (highly trackable) an ad on a billboard for a new type of liquor isn't going to be noticed in non-effectiveness immediately. It will be a slow death.
"that will survive a while are billboards and even they will only last until we have self-driving cars"
Otoh, ordinary car occupants, if not engaged in conversations are more likely to be on a mobile device and not looking out the window. And maybe conversing with the driver about what they read on the mobile device instead of sitting there looking out the window looking at the billboards. Same with billboards viewed from trains (riders on devices certainly more than would be reading books or magazines..)
“123 years from now, these images will be transmitted on a vast world wide information network. These small windows into your life will make impressions on the minds of thousands of future strangers across the globe. And incredibly, the magic of this journey through space and time, will be cheapened by embedded pop up ads.”
I think the bigger offense with the displays isn't the ads (the subway is already plastered with them, and the new screens will pay for themselves in that manner) but how remarkably crappy the panels are.
I have corrective lenses that give me normal vision, and I have to really squint to make out station names and bullets on the digitized system maps that the panels display. I feel terrible for anyone whose vision is even slightly worse than mine, much less tourists who have enough trouble with the printed maps.
> But if elevators at typical office buildings or apartment complexes start doing this? We're doomed.
The high-rise building I worked in several years ago put ad screens in the elevators. No sound, fortunately - but still! Video ads in your face, on the way to work, on the way to lunch, up and down, over and over, every day? It was more than I could stand.
I bought a roll of privacy film, cut pieces sized to the screens, and kept them in my bag. Every time I was alone in the elevator, I'd pull one out and glue it to the screen. Ahh, tranquility: the ads dissolved into a meaningless colorful blur.
Of course the maintenance folks would scrape the film off whenever they found it, but I just glued it back on, over and over... for months.
Anyone who has taken the NYC Subway understands this sentiment. The only way to avoid them is to completely close your eyes and wish you were somewhere else.
The worst thing about that is that the billboard that you're talking about is for car insurance. Theres a camera built into the display and the animation tracks where your face is looking.
— bad UX designers in 2070
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