Question about Billboards

I suspect that they DO understand how people feel about these signs. People don't want a billboard where it blocks their view. People who DON'T live near a billboard usually see it as advertising. Those who have a billboard peering in through the window do NOT see it as advertising - they see it as an intrusion, no matter exactly where it's located or how large it is. People in this circumstance feel as if they have no choice but to either put up with the sign or be "driven out of their home."

So, when a sign goes up, the advertiser has to make a business decision (I assume they're making BUSINESS decisions) about return on their investment. They have to balance off the negative reactions of the neighbors against the return they get from the businesses that bought the ads. They figure that more people are going to find the sign useful that will find it abhorent. They are probably right.

So the best you can do, if you don't like the signs is to make sure they don't get an adequate return on their investment. Then - if they're in this for the money - they will invest it in some other way.

Ways to do this (legally) are by raising public conciousness against billboards and their advertisers - perhaps by placing your OWN ads educating the public on this problem - or by organizing a boycott of the businesses who advertise - though I would TALK to those businesses first, asking them if they are aware of how their ad is beingrecieved by you and your neighbors. Might be good to give them a chance to come out winners

But, whatever you do, don't bother making this personal between you and the sign makers. I'm sure your pain has already been calculated into the business model. You'll have to find some other way to ghet their attention - and money is usually the language they speak

When I moved in, the billboard was behind me up the hill by the governors house. Now it's in my "front yard". I had a civil and pleasant chat with Si Money today and found him very amenable to come to a compromise which will improve my situation and not affect your business. He told me that he will be discussing this with you, and I am certain that we can reach an amicable solution.

Enh two pages of stuff I don't really want to read sorry.

I did have one question though.

Are real life bill boards *really* 60 feet wide by 30 feet high? Thats almost as tall as a three story building and as wide or wider than most roads.

Are real people 10 feet tall and 5 feet wide? :}

Perception of size in SL is a bit skewed, everything tends to be huge. Things built to normal scale are tiny and generally unusable.

A typical staircase would be no more than 1m wide in RL, but a 1m wide path in SL would have everyone stuck and unable to pass.

A logical LindenMeter to Meter conversion would be a nifty task for someone :}

This has everything to do with size. No one ever suggested boycotting stores that advertise in the kiosks. If you were to reduce the size of your billboards, I expect that people would look on them quite favorably.



This is impractical, precisely because the billboards are so large. One would have to buy most of a sim to have enough of a buffer from such a billboard. If the billboards were smaller, the buffer zones that people have already purchased would be plenty.



Changing the size of the billboard would be very easy. However, I sense that you are unwilling to do that. In which case I have another suggestion, based on two of your posts:





If you believe that the billboard is most noticeable from some distance away, and if you believe that there's less traffic in the northern half of Taber than in the southern half, why not put the billboard at your house? According to your statements, it won't be noticeable to you, since you'll be close to it, but it will be visible to people passing through the high traffic, southern half of Taber.

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It would then only be visible by those flying north directly into the sim wall, or to my house. If you *really* want me to put a sign on my house, i'll put a second one up there, it's not a problem, but it's not a good advertising spot.

I suppose I could put one that's a 150 or so meters wide up on the southern side of my house so that it's visible from the next 3 sims or so? That would make for a nice ad. I think you'd complain more about that though.

Sorry Si, I was responding to Rathe who stated:

I agree that most things in SL are oversized. But avatars are not 10 feet tall and 5 feet wide. They are more normally sized from 5 feet to something between 6 and 7 feet.

But anyways I was just asking if what Rathe stated really was the case, because that seems a lot bigger than I would imagine real bill boards to be.

So by that logic, the current sign is only visible to people flying south from your house, or from the sim wall. Interesting.

Ok here's a thought.

Make a lil box, put it on the ground. Put a script in that box that senses av's. Make sure it maintains a list of the avs it's seen. Whenever it senses an av it hasn't seen before, it rez's the humongous billboard.

Billboard should also have a script to make it llDie after a couple of minutes.

Or -- same basic idea, but without rez'ing and dying -- the sensor would be in the billboard itself. Normal state of the board would have all textures at 85% transparent. When a new av is sensed, texture alpha would go 0 for X minutes, then back to 85%.

#!

Hrm, an interesting idea. I'll mess around with this one and see what I come up with :}

Only problem I see with it is sensor speeds and such, sensors aren't really all that wonderful, very easy to miss things with them. Certainly a good idea, though i'm not sure we want to ignore people who have seen it before, but perhaps some logic on top of that for them to acknowledge themself into the sensor as not wanting to see it.

been in taber since mid-november, and I'm not sure that its the oldest place. Although it is kinda funny - I woulda expected some complaints about my roof by now. Spinning and flashing and such.

Its kind of funny how billboards are the most offensive thing in SL (you will get a much bigger outcry over a billboard than a 40m penis next door). Banning billboards altogether is not a realistic option though - its to easy to make a billboard, and to hard to define it. We can't use hawaii' restrictions, becasue they probably deal with size, etc - and Candie's wall would probably count as one. Not to mention, I know the themed community I am working with is planning on using billboards as part of the theme.

SO we go back to the idea of the community. In americana - the community can decide to dissallow billboards for good - they will have the power to do it because they own all the land in americana. outside of a community, we go back to anarchy. So if you don't like billboards, and don't want to see them, enter into a community that agrees with you - it sounds like there are plenty of like-minded parties. The community can do what the individual can't - you can buy more contiguos(sp?) land parcels, create rules, etc.

Taber and Clementina are old sims - so its going to be hard to buy all the land for your community, but I feel that if the billboard makers are boycotted b the community around them, it will make sense to sell the land instead of continuing to operate at a loss. If they don't - well, the neg rating is there for a purpose - and I engourage people to use it. neg ratings mean they won't be able to afford it as well, and again, will be encouraged to sell it. and after it is gone, you can always change your rating. Lord knows Ive changed my rating of jean cook 5 or 6 times (where is that girl anyways?)

In conclusion: Billboards are not worht banning, but if you don't want them, there are ways to get rid of them. Use the system the way it was meant to be used, or its no use complaining it doesn't work.

bbc

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bonus points if the board is also phantom for those who, as you put it, "acknowledge themself into the sensor as not wanting to see it" -- because if you don't want to see it, you probably don't want to fly into it, either =)

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A number of arguments on both sides of this issue have been based on how it is in the "real world". It is a natural shortcut whenever dealing with one of these sticky issues to just resort to how things are in RL. Case Closed.

Fortunately (depending on your point of view) this IS NOT the real world. So notions that we may take for granted about property ownership, freedom of speech, etc. are just as illusory as our textured surroundings.

The ultimate freedom to decide on these things will reside with the company that makes the service available. Since their goal is to attract as large a user base as possible (presumably) they are going to want to make sure that the greatest percentage of people enjoy the experience and the smallest percentage are turned off by it. While democratic style operating modes may go a long way toward achieving that goal there is a lot more to democracy (as practiced) than "lets just take a vote and decide it that way". It sadens me that so often in these on-line situations one side or the other resorts to "it's a free country", displaying not only their ignorance of the TOS that they agreed to, but also of how important, complex, and delicate our democratic institutions are in real life.

Staying away from political and religious comparisons though, lets take a look at billboards in Real Life versus Second Life:

(1) Billboards in RL are banned at all sorts of levels, by some states, some local communities, along certain roads, which brings us to:

(2) In RL Billboards go with roads. I've never seen a billboard inside a residential community, nor on top of apartment buildings, nor in public parks, or adjacent to them. I live at the beach and while there are billboards on the way to the beach I've never seen a billboard ON the beach or within a hundred yards of the beach for that matter. I see billboards almost exclusively along roadsides. But there are even limitations on that:

(3) In RL I don't see billboards on road going through public lands. I don't see billboards on roads near most cities. The most common site for billboards is adjacent to farmland, wide open country in other words. An who owns this land?

(4) FARMERS! They lease the land to ad agencies who in turn make that creative content, plaster it up there and take care of changing the light bulbs. I've never heard of 10x1 meter plots of land for sale along the roadside. Now it could be that in the more industrialized states the roadside spots are leased out by the state government, but my main point is that in the real world you do not buy parcels of real-estate that are just large enough to put a sign on.

(5) Targeted ads generally put an ad for something in a spot where people looking for that thing are likely to be. On my way to the beach I see ads for suntan oil and hotel accommodations, on the way to Florida you see ads for Sea World and Disney. In mens magazines you tend to see ads for sports cars, in retirement magazines, more likely an ad for an SUV or luxury sedan. When I walk into a shopping center or my local computer store I may well see ads for special products being featured *AT THOSE LOCATIONS*. It makes very little sense to advertise an auto mechanic with a single location in New York on a highway heading to San Fransisco.

So, it appears that very little about the billboards in SL have anything to do with the way things work in RL. The imitation by the SL billboards of what goes on in RL is only accurate at a very superficial level (and there is debate about whether the sizes are accurate or not). I'd recommend that those who fancy themselves as new-age virtual advertising executives could spend more time looking at their true objectives and could probably come up with more effective methods for getting the job done. That is, assuming that your mission is to help sell products rather than to just irritate as many people as possible.

While I was typing all this I got interrupted for dinner and I see Shebang has already offered a good suggestion for an alternative to billboards. I'll offer one that might even be better: An electronic Yellow Pages. Even in the real world, the ability to find a specific item when you are looking for it has far outstripped the need to blast generic advertising all over the place. When I want a box of Kleenex, a wall clock or a shortwave radio, I'm not likely to hop in my car and go perusing the billboards in my area. I *AM* likely to get out the yellow pages, consult Yahoo, or maybe check the ads in a recent newspaper.

Make a database of all products for sale in SL. Charge people to be in the database, or charge them to get top billing in the database. Look at the advertising that is *REALLY* going on in the real world and imitate that. No need to imitate the real world of the 50's, unless you want to do that as part of a themed sim. Find a way to get product information to people who are LOOKING for product information and not only will you get rich in SL you will also have lots of friends. Keep making billboards and you may end up with neither.

Find a tool to fit the problem, not the other way 'round.

Mac,

As always you make some excellent points =)

There are a couple of issues which you didn't address, however:

1) how to get this directory in front of the consumers
2) how to deal with the here today, gone tomorrow shops

1. In the real world, the phone company gives away free copies of their directory to the consumers.

So that's how I'd play it in SL, if I were going to do this. I'd spend as much time as possible at the welcome area(s), greeting new residents and offering them a free copy of the most current Directory.

2. Real World: there's a new phone book printed every year. SL: Yearly isn't anywhere near often enough. Monthly probably isn't either, to be honest. I'd go with bi-weekly, I think, and charge the advertisers accordingly. IOW, instead of one big chunk of change, a much smaller amount, but they have to renew (and pay again) each time they want to be listed in the next directory.

Yeah, that's how I'd do it, I think. Might would even hire a couple of people to work the welcome area(s) / event venues. I don't think I'd try to do it all by myself -- this is not a small undertaking if it's to succeed.

In fact... no. No no no no no no no! It's starting to sound like a little too much fun. I've got too much on my plate already =)


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Well I'm against billboards first of all, but have you really never seen billboards in a city?

Where do you live? City's are plastered with billboards. On top of buildings, along roads, painted on buildings etc... everywhere.

JV

I'm curious. Has anyone in SL actually bought anything from a store because they've seen a billboard advertising the product?

Answer to above reply:

Nope, and Ive commited myself to *not* going to stuff pictured on the billboards (the really out of place, stupidly not-supposed-to-be-there kind).

Boards are already made phantom upon request, just not by default :}

Yes. Store owners have commented on the referrals from our boards.

As a habitual random flyer can make a request for boards to be phantom by default? hehe.

I've visited advertised places but I usually don't buy from them -- in fact, there's only been one or two places where I've bought things from, and those are the marketplace area in old Nexus Prime and Avatar Central.

Well, as I was typing this in my first notion was that it was too complex to do in-world at all, and that maybe an external web/php/mysql setup would be the best bet. I know we all find that distasteful though, and with the complexity of some of the scripts that are out there already I wouldn't put it past one of the better scripters to be able to handle this.

As I understand it the current limitation with scripting is storage, which would be a key element here. Maybe the scripting language could have a MySQL back-end interface put in. I don't THINK that would be too hard, with each user perhaps having a 20 meg limit or something.

As far as distribution... maybe Yellow Pages was a bad choice of shorthand for the concept. I used to rely on the Yellow Pages for shopping a lot before the Internet got popular. It seems like I get a new set of Yellow Pages every few weeks, from different phone companies these days. They usually leave them on my doorstep in a protective plastic bag, open end up, so that when I come home I have a bag full of soggy yellow paper all stuck together.

Think of this though: an object, maybe which LOOKS like a yellow pages given out freely to anyone who want one (I'm sure the Lindens would distribute them to new users if the coding were done). The object would just be a script, with some text based controls to do look-ups. Ideally the object and script would be rather small. The back-end database would really be doing all the work. The data would be always up to date. No need to "physically" refresh each persons book.

If implemented with a true database engine, you could do some fancy searches: "desc=clock","price .le. 250" might return all the objects with "clock" in their descriptions that cost $250 or less, with all the sellers, locations etc. I can imagine all sorts of fancy things happening with those returned data items.

I think charging the advertisers would make most sense. You could charge users for searches, but then cheap-skates like me would be less inclined to use it.

Really, if we had something like this would there be ANY reason to have billboards?

Near Washington DC. I can't say that there are NO billboards there, but very few. Part of that I am sure are zoning issues, but I also think billboard usage is way down these days due to their relative lack of effectiveness. On highways they actually perform a service, notifying you of gas and lodging locations. People rarely object to advertising that is useful. In the real world there are a few situations where billboards make sense, in SL, as far as I am concerned they are a hammer looking for a nail.

To connect buyers and sellers on-line there are countless better ways.

I believe the Lindens have said they are working on this.

This is what I've heard as well. The Business Directoy was one of the principal reasons Turtlemoon Publishing was started. We intended to publish a monthly directory that was free to the public and supported by subscriptions from the advertisers.

However, it really makes no sense to follow through with this since we would have had to incur significant startup costs (especially in distribution) with the likelihood of never recovering them. Bad business model.

If the Lindens really want to be in that business (along with the news business), then I'll bow to the nationalisation of the publishing industry.

So, I've taken up taxi driving. Funny world ;-)