Question

Billboards Not Pleasant, but Affective

1. In terms of “any billboard” – not just digital billboards – are they “sky trash” as Scenic America suggests, or do they provide a value to consumers and advertisers as the Outdoor Advertising Association of America asserts? As someone who is already agitated by the constant influx of advertisements in everyday life, I have to agree with Scenic America that they clutter the landscape and natural beauty of the American countryside. While I do not enjoy them, this is not to say that they are not affective. I think that billboards may have had more value in previous decades (especially after they were standardized in the early 1900s.) Even now, however, they are useful in highlighting local amenities and small businesses that may otherwise go unnoticed to highway motorists. I would also like to discuss my distaste for billboards in terms of who they benefit. I agree with Scenic America's assertion that billboards make a few people a lot of money (even though many of their other claims are questionably bias.) Many billboards are monopolized by large corporations that do little to benefit the communities in which they advertise.

2. Should private property owners be allowed to contract with outdoor advertising companies for the placement of billboards on private property without government interference? Or, should the government regulate the number, placement, and size of billboards irrespective of the rights of property owners? This is a difficult argument to navigate, seeing as many people that live in the areas that would accommodate billboards often (but not always) strongly dislike or are hesitant about any government interference. I am certainly not a fan of billboards that display obscene or hurtful messages (like some radical Christian groups are privy to advertise), but I cannot imagine it would be easy to regulate variables like the number, placement and size of billboards on private property. Molly Webb of Curbed Philadelphia states in her article that of the 183 billboards along I-95 in Philadelphia, about half of them violate basic zoning regulations. I think that the first thing to do would be to regulate the number of billboards allowed on one privately-owned property.

3. Have you ever been distracted by a digital billboard? Based on all of your research, do digital billboards pose a safety risk or not? Be sure to defend your answer. Upon my own reflection, I believed that I spent just a bit more time paying attention to digital billboards than static ones (perhaps waiting to see what the digital boards change to.) This hypothesis was confirmed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which found that eyes glanced at digital billboards for an average of .379 seconds, rather than the .335 seconds spent glancing at static billboards. However, both statistics fall far below the two-second benchmark constituting a hazard. For this reason, I do not believe that digital billboards pose a safety risk, especially when compared to distracted driving caused by cellphone use or alcohol.

To reply/comment in the Discussion Forum: Do you agree or disagree with the member on one or more points of discussion? Why or why not?   

Answer 1

1.Billboard advertising is a useful form of advertising because it gets attention from the public. With time the ways of advertising has also been changing, billboards are becoming less popular but they still are effective form of advertisement.

Billboards as a form of advertisement are very helpful to small and local firms, but with the large multinationals as potential competitions to these small firms, the advertising gets monopolized by the large companies. These large companies claim to benefit the community with the advertising where as the fact of the matter is that the gain ROI from the advertising, by using billboards they advertise at a low cost but gain much more. Therefore, the large companies with there monopolized billboards gain much more than the community in which they advertise.

2. No, the government should not be allowed to interfere with any form of billboard advertising on a private property. The government, like the member stated, can as a basic step regulate the number of billboard to be allowed on a private property, but it should not directly get involved between the company and the owners of the private property.

It would be a difficult task for the government to look into each private property for billboards, the size etc and with that the property being private is the main reason why the government should not interfere.

3. I agree with the member on this point.

Given the fact that average .379 seconds of eye glance is spent on digital billboard which is far below the two second benchmark, it is safe to say that digital billboard do not pose safety risk while driving.