Adfree Cities
adfreecities.org.uk
Adfree Cities
1–10 of 278 posts
Re: Adfree Cities
#2Replace ad spaces for murals, public art, or interesting architecture!
Re: Adfree Cities
#3Incredible
Re: Adfree Cities
#4The 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.
Re: Adfree Cities
#5The 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 is cool!
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...
Re: Adfree Cities
#6I have personally gotten very aggressive at removing as many ads from my life as I can. I pay for the "premium" version of everything I can to remove ads (Spotify, YouTube, podcast subscriptions) and use adblocker aggressively. It's so much nicer than the alternative.
There are two places where ads remain: 1) Social media where the ads are integrated and not blocked (Facebook, YouTube in-video promos) 2) Billboards in cities and airports
#1 has gotten more aggressive lately. I'm not a fan, but I understand why it has happened. However, at least I can choose to avoid these sites if I wish.
#2, which is what the article is about, is unavoidable for me. I find billboards ugly, distracting, and annoying clutter. It's just visual "noise." What's worse is that the products targeted in #1 above are frequently relevant to me, and I have purchased them. But I cannot think of a single time I have ever made any purchase based on any billboard. I would love if more municipalities clamped down on these.
Re: Adfree Cities
#7The 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.…
I guess you live in Lyon, France, same as I do.
Even if I despite the ads, the bike sharing deal is quite good for users and the city.
Re: Adfree Cities
#8I have personally gotten very aggressive at removing as many ads from my life as I can. I pay for the "premium" version of everything I can to remove ads (Spotify, YouTube, podcast subscriptions) and use adblocker aggressively. It's so much nicer than the alternative. There are two places where ads remain: 1) Social media where the ads are integrated and not blocked (Facebook, YouTube in-video promos) 2) Billboards i…
You can get rid of #1 by moving to Mastodon. Many servers appreciate donations but basically none of them have ads.
Re: Adfree Cities
#9The fact that you can advertise in cities is the reason that big tech doesn't capture 100% of profits in every single market. Advertising in cities, from billboards to flyers to stickers is the only way to reach people directly, without going through an intermediary big tech monopoly. I have a sense that the people most likely to support this thing also whine a lot about big tech, so this is just another bullet point in a long list of "why are these 5 companies controlling everything after I've destroyed every single alternative".
Re: Adfree Cities
#10Ban all ads. All of them, they all are junk info our brains are not designed to handle.