I remember when I was young and every billboard in SF was some stupid web 2.0 startup, or SaaS, or Crypto Shitcoins. Now we're plagued with AI billboards and the world is ending!
It's more of a tragedy of the commons. There are so many AI billboards in SF that I legitimately can't differentiate any of the AI startups anymore, and that's even if they say what their product actually is.
I feel like SF has been full of frequently inscrutable billboards as long as I’ve been coming here — at least a decade.
It’s maybe got slightly more extreme recently, with an even larger percentage of them being inscrutable to me as someone who both works in tech and has a decent grasp of current industry trends.
I’ve never really got it — if even I don’t know what you’re advertising (or often, who is advertising!), how does this help your sales?
I saw the band Chat Pile a while back in Los Angeles. They played the previous night in San Francisco — their singer mentioned the billboards and led the crowd in an ethusiastic chant of "F*k AI!".
If you drive through Las Vegas, all the billboards are about casinos. If you drive through farm country, all the billboards are about the local cash crop.
Advertisers target the people likely to see the ad and spend money on the topic. Billboards are extremely geographically restricted, so local interest dominates. This isn't really news.
They’re tacky, but I appreciate how clearly it homogenizes what is being pitched globally as some unique thing that only a few big companies do, or that it’s magic. Like the other thread on Vegas casino adverts… It’s big, it’s annoying, and if they’re going to survive (casinos get demolished/sold/bankrupted), lasting differentiation requires more than just sparkly lights, an AI feature, and a VC-subsidized advertising budget.
"Killing SF" is overly dramatic, and others have noted that the phenomenon observed here is not unique to AI, or SF.
But there is something a little...alienating about advertising that's not meant for you.
It's a dumb example, but in Pittsburgh the football stadium was renamed from Heinz Field to Acrisure Stadium.
Of course, "Three Rivers Stadium", the name of the previous building, was best. It's not a name that tries to sell you something. But if you must sell something, "Heinz" is extremely good: it sells products for everyone, and it has historical roots in the area. Of the people, for the people.
But Acrisure? I've looked it up a few times and I still can't remember exactly what it is. Business services or insurance or something like that. And I'm sure that both Acrisure and the Steelers don't really care that I don't know what it is, because it's not really for the vast majority of the 65,000 people who show up on a Sunday to cheer for the team.
Hard for me to get too upset about billboards in an urban environment, let alone if they're promoting sugar water or some dumb AI service. Let them waste their money.
SF is always on the brink of death from one thing or another. Has to be the most melodramatic populace in America. I’ve lived here for 13 years, my wife for 20. It’s the same as always.
We saw a Sees Candies : No AI needed billboard yesterday. Thought that was funny.
Oh it's the AI billboards, and not the crowds of like 20 people shooting up at 7am as I'm walking from my hotel to Moscone for my work conference? I guess the AI billboards do create a bitterly ironic feeling in that context, but my overall impression of SF is that it's the lowest trust society I've ever been to, in or out of this country. Basic lawlessness is so common that even things like my hotel's elevator inspection was 3 years out of date when I last visited. Part of that is that I end up having to walk around the Tenderloin/SoMA/Union Square parts of town if I'm there for something at Moscone, but honestly that's on SF. Keep the downtown part of your city that people visit clean enough that my clothes don't reek at the end of the day just from the smell of the city. I honestly never have this issue in NYC.
In the 90s I remember billboards on US-101 for VHDL something or the other. At least people have heard of AI. But yes, these low-effort and occasionally creepy billboards are nowhere near as entertaining as the old Lombardi Sports ads ("The Great Outdoors. Connecting us to our heritage. Like the Donner Party").
Off-topic, but am curious about why this page doesn't allow scrolling using either a mouse or touchpad unless you're "grabbing" the scrollbar. (At least you can page up and page down with keys, I should add.) Am using a Blink-based browser on macOS, if that matters.
Yawn. I was just in Tampa where I saw several billboards for “permanent male enhancement”.*. I don’t drink or smoke, so liquor ane cigarette ads just slide into my blind spot (a neural network ad blocker).
My favorite billboard was in Silicon Valley, not SF, back in the early 90s when people around here still cared about technology: “high speed analog simulation.” If you needed that, the billboard was for you! Nobody complained. The same year I decided my company would show job ads before the movies at century 16 (next to where Google now is). The lady who took the ss ws dubious, but our first (“can you program in C++? Looking for a job? Write to jobs@cygnus.com). It made the NYT, but then became commonplace and now nobody looks for jobs that way. Sic transit gloria mundi
* I assume this is a service that teaches them empathy and how to listen.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 71.1 ms ] threadDo the exact opposite of what the majority of the "AI billboards" are saying.
Job done.
It’s maybe got slightly more extreme recently, with an even larger percentage of them being inscrutable to me as someone who both works in tech and has a decent grasp of current industry trends.
I’ve never really got it — if even I don’t know what you’re advertising (or often, who is advertising!), how does this help your sales?
Advertisers target the people likely to see the ad and spend money on the topic. Billboards are extremely geographically restricted, so local interest dominates. This isn't really news.
And yes, they are annoying.
[Billboards stop targeting you at all.]
Ads no longer influence us to buy things we don't need! This is terrible!
Just take the win.
But there is something a little...alienating about advertising that's not meant for you.
It's a dumb example, but in Pittsburgh the football stadium was renamed from Heinz Field to Acrisure Stadium.
Of course, "Three Rivers Stadium", the name of the previous building, was best. It's not a name that tries to sell you something. But if you must sell something, "Heinz" is extremely good: it sells products for everyone, and it has historical roots in the area. Of the people, for the people.
But Acrisure? I've looked it up a few times and I still can't remember exactly what it is. Business services or insurance or something like that. And I'm sure that both Acrisure and the Steelers don't really care that I don't know what it is, because it's not really for the vast majority of the 65,000 people who show up on a Sunday to cheer for the team.
That's...weird.
We saw a Sees Candies : No AI needed billboard yesterday. Thought that was funny.
My favorite billboard was in Silicon Valley, not SF, back in the early 90s when people around here still cared about technology: “high speed analog simulation.” If you needed that, the billboard was for you! Nobody complained. The same year I decided my company would show job ads before the movies at century 16 (next to where Google now is). The lady who took the ss ws dubious, but our first (“can you program in C++? Looking for a job? Write to jobs@cygnus.com). It made the NYT, but then became commonplace and now nobody looks for jobs that way. Sic transit gloria mundi
* I assume this is a service that teaches them empathy and how to listen.