A few years ago, I drove from Burlington to Boston in the United States, and the emerald-colored scenery outside the car window was natural, like a peaceful screensaver. As the mileposts passed one by one, I felt an indescribable peace.
Later, as I crossed the state line in Massachusetts, the answer was on the verge: The ride was peaceful in large part because there were no billboards, which are illegal in Vermont. Billboards are currently banned in four states: Alaska, Hawaii, Maine and Vermont. More than 1,500 cities and towns around the world have the same ban, including the world's largest city, Sao Paulo, Brazil.
More than 15,000 billboards were taken down when São Paulo introduced its “City Clean Law” in 2007, along with 300,000 intrusive signs — landmark towers, posters, bus and taxi ads.
What would be the result of removing all these ads? A subsequent poll showed that a majority of São Pauloians supported the decision. Ask what people really like, rather than letting profitability dictate the cityscape. What a novel idea.
Unfortunately, we have come to regard advertising as part of our daily lives, and are used to seeing it as a regular part of "messaging". After all, we all get all our TV, radio shows, online articles and podcasts from free advertising, don't we?
But there is no free lunch in the world. Every hour of online TV is accompanied by nearly 20 minutes of commercial breaks, and the same is true for other media. In fact, although advertising is labeled as "free", we need to pay for it: two of the most precious resources-time and attention.
If we don't want ads to steal our attention or our children's attention, we must be willing to pay for things that we consider "free."
Almost all streaming service providers provide a paid service that allows users to avoid traditional advertising models. Other businesses and individuals, such as Wikipedia, have created a "freemium" model based on a variation of this ad-free model: creators provide content for free, and interested viewers tip for support.
Whatever your opinion of these ad serving methods, there is no doubt that this practice frees productions from unwarranted interruptions and improves the quality of creation; at the same time, audiences know that creators will not be burdened by the will of advertisers , the sense of trust has also improved.
Not only that, as customers, we will also become more cautious about the works we want to consume from the point of paying money in exchange for works. Since it is a paid consumption, it is necessary to ensure that it is worth the money. Oddly enough, that's often not the case with so-called "free" shows: we really don't need to pay for them, but they don't deserve our attention either.
Whether your time is worth $10, $100, or $1,000 an hour, you probably spend tens of thousands of dollars a year on advertising messages. When you think about it, you're actually paying for the ad, and your attention is wasted.
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