I posted about The City That Said No To Advertising previously in my post titled “A Clean City – Devoid of all Advertising.”
Recently I’ve been focusing on decreasing advertising in my life. A personal goal has been to avoid retail purchases at all costs, where possible. In addition to my eschewing retail stores, I’ve shunned television. Watching a television show now consists of downloading it or getting the DVD.
However, I am unable to avoid billboards wherever I go. Billboards are a blight on the landscape, much like the highway. What can be done about these monolithic advertisement mediums?
More importantly, billboards are becoming more and more similar to television and web ads. My vehicle cannot have anti-popup billboard software installed. Can it? With the creation of billboards sporting digital displays these ads are increasingly invasive.
An article on Web Worker Daily titled Ad Blocking: A Market or a Moral Issue? peaked my interest. Especially the sentence “this is not a moral or ethical issue: it is an economic one.” Author Anne Zelenka goes on to explain if advertisements no longer existed, a new business model would have to be created. This also applies to the abolishment of billboards.
Personally, I block advertisements using the FireFox extension Stylish. However, I only block ads on my favorite site LifeHacker as a few of the ads are inappropriate for my workplace.
Regardless, there is no avoiding billboards, and other outdoor, advertisements. I applaud Sao Paul for abolishing their outdoor ads.
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