Starting with the recent Public Ad Campaign targeting illegal street level advertising and followed by the Anti-Advertising Salon held last week, we’re noticing a more visible and organized movement to combat the commercial saturation of our physical and mental environments. This renewed effort couldn’t come at a better time, as the NY Times reports that while most segments of advertising are down, the increasing number of vacant retail spaces in urban areas has contributed to a rise in the amount of street level billboards going up.
The lagging economy has not only presented more opportunities to reach consumers, but is changing the [...]

Over the weekend, the Public Ad Campaign organized groups of New Yorkers to go around and whitewash illegal street-level billboards located throughout the city that the Department of Buildings is apparently too busy to enforce despite their stricter registration program. The coordinated effort not only served as a reminder of the advertising that targets us at every turn, but also proved to be a valiant attempt at citywide beautification. The whitewashed ads were instantly transformed into blank canvases for teams of street artists to reclaim as ad-hoc gallery spaces. Though we personally feel that the contrast created by leaving the [...]

We wrote last month about the city of Los Angeles winning a court appeal to uphold their ban on new billboards but despite the legislation, many advertisers continue to try and skirt the wording of the law by putting up supergraphics signs instead.  Supergraphics are essentially enormous advertisements made mostly out of vinyl that are unfurled and strung over multistory buildings. If any form of advertising can claim to be more obtrusive than a billboard then this might be it. The images which can be bigger than the largest billboards often lie across the face of buildings which can cover windows, [...]

In move that will likely effect offsite advertising across the country, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled in favor of Los Angeles’ 2002 ban on most new billboards, overturning a lower court’s decision that it violated advertisers’ First Amendment rights. The injunction specifically targets product signage being placed on buildings or spaces where that product is not sold, effectively eliminating advertisers from purchasing any new real estate and further cluttering the skyline.  
The most recent challenge came from Metro Lights LLC, who claimed these regulations were unjust, given that Los Angeles continues to sell advertising on all [...]