I wish we had that on the tube in London. Instead, you ride an escalator and see upwards of 20-maybe 30 video ads on the way. And that's before a marketing firm commissions the redesign of a tunnel so an entire stretch of walkway is 100% ad, like a shitty Disney ride. Or you arrive to one of the big terminals and gigantic screens are blasting even more ads at you. This is, of course, after you spend 40+ minutes on a train that has a continual row of adverts placed just above the eye-level of the person sat in front of you.

Then you look at what the older tube stations looked like and they're quite pretty; lots of mosaics and other works of art, each station having a distinctive style. Now it's white tiles, white LED lights, and adverts.

Tube adverts also tend to play on people’s insecurities only making it worse

As someone who is highly susceptible to yawn-contagion (I literally yawned writing that's and again writing this parenthetical) the <redacted-to-not-give-them-exposure> snake oil ads showing the woman yawning are a nightmare for me, but I suspect I'm in a tiny minority

They're also the only place where you get really verbose ads...so you spend all the time reading their bullshit prose before the next tube arrives.

Half the adverts are basically essays to keep people interested when they can't use their phone.

Right. And IIRC advertising only contributes about 7% of TfL's revenue.

i.e. For about 10p on a bus ticket or 20-30 on a tube ticket it could just be gone.

I made a post just recently about this - unfortunately public transport is lowest common denominator so this can't happen.

Lots of places in America have severe restrictions on advertising. Hilton Head, South Carolina; and along the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey leap to mind. I think along some of the toll roads in Houston this is also true (It's been a while, I might be remembering that wrong).

Billboards are banned in downtown Chicago, so big companies rent storefronts in tourist areas and put in stores that are not supposed to make money, just to be billboards for their brand.

When the Edens Expressway was built, all of the wealthy north shore suburbs entered a pact to ban billboards. It’s so pleasant.

I live in downtown Chicago and I find the lack of billboards everywhere refreshing. Michigan Avenue has very few advertisements with the exception of unintrusive storefront signs.

New billboards are banned in Houston anywhere (and have been for decades). So they're not along tollways, or any new road. Old ones still exist, sadly.

Hawaii has a similar ban in place too. It's so nice not being bombarded by billboards in your day-to-day life. Definitely one of the things I've missed since moving from there.

Vermont as well. Really noticeable when you drive on the highway, much more relaxing and scenic.

Just realized that my current state (Kansas) doesn't really have much in the way of roadside billboards. Never thought about it before.

But it does help take in the views, a lot more so than, say, the highways of Florida.

Taxi toppers are an interesting one to ban - I suppose the city can simply refuse to license taxis that refuse to sign a contract agreeing to not use toppers but any advertisement on a private not otherwise restricted vehicle would be the providence of the state DMV - possibly... I'm not certain how a lawsuit would come down trying to determine if vehicle appearance could be restricted by a state or if that right was withheld by the federal government.

> any advertisement on a private not otherwise restricted vehicle would be the providence of the state DMV

???

The state DMV neither writes nor enforces laws.

Are there any government bodies between city and state level that have the power to do this? In CA, US for example. Not a quiz.

Counties can pass ordinances, if that is what you are asking.

Sao Paulo did the same:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cidade_Limpa

I wholeheartedly feel that advertisements forced on you in public are a type of violence

With rare exceptions (mostly help-wanted signs and signs for candidates for local offices before elections) the only outdoor advertising in Marin County, CA, is on the buses, the bus shelters -- but only the shelters near highway 101 -- and retail locations advertising stuff sold there. I.e., vastly less outdoor advertising than most of the US.

Bit of a hijack but are you still working? I’ve been in LA for 15 years and the plan is to move to SB once we no longer need to work. I love everything about the area (I just did a 5 personal retreat at Lake Cachuma) but job optionality is low.

I’ll be back on Saturday and can’t wait for the peace, calm and beauty.

yes! there's a couple dozen tech companies in the area, but there's a large demographic of byo$$. happy to connect via other channels if you want a longer discussion.

You assume advertising somehow helps the economy, but it is probably the reverse. If business A buys ads, it's competitor B is forced to do the some, or be slowly edged out of the market. Like peacock plumes, ads are mostly a tax that weighs down every business in the area.

But how can businesses may become known?

I see that maybe image ads are of the peacock feather type. Informative ads, like a new movie being out in theaters, can actually be net-positive financially, at the expense of the strain on public attention.

> Informative ads, like a new movie being out in theaters, can actually be net-positive financially, at the expense of the strain on public attention.

It would be easy to avoid that strain, by segregating such informative ads into places where people can seek them out on their own. Have advertising be PULL, not PUSH. Unfortunately, this is the exact opposite of what the advertising industry wants (and really, what most companies want - everyone is happy with getting a little short-term advantage at the expense of everyone else and their own future).

So more or less enforcing the status quo. If you can't do push marketing, whatever people are used to will stay for much, much longer.

False premise, even more in the age of the internet. If you want to know what's the best x, where x is a phone, a flashlight, a toaster, then you can just google it anytime. In fact, it's very much the opposite: advertising enforces the status quo, since the biggest companies will be able to promote their product at a massive scale (bombardment is a better word) and monopolize attention. Small businesses get squat.

But that's not a problem, IMO. If something was good enough before, it's likely good enough still. If it stops being good enough, people will be prompted to look for alternatives, which they'll then discover. Given how it's nearly impossible to satisfy human beings, they'll start looking for options sooner rather than later.

> how can businesses may become known?

Some argue all advertising should be banned. If that were to occur, the search burden would shift to consumers. We'd subscribe to curators like the Consumer Report or Wirecutter, storekeepers, et cetera and let them do the searching on our behalf.

This article considers something weaker. No public advertising. No billboards. Direct mail, storefront displays, in-store advertising, et cetera are still permitted.

> Direct mail, storefront displays, in-store advertising, et cetera are still permitted.

Direct mail is the worst form of advertising, from a personal perspective and from an environmental perspective. You're littering directly onto others, and forcing them to deal with trash you created in the vain hope that some of them decide to act on that trash.

It all ought to be marked "Return To Sender" and placed back into the mail stream, so the original sender has to deal with disposal. Forcing entities to internalize negative externalities is the only way to stop them from creating those externalities to begin with.