If you drive through San Francisco on I-80, every single billboard between the Bay Bridge and the 101 is for some kind of AI service (except, amusingly, the one for Yudkowsky's new book about AI doom). All of them look terrible and completely useless. There was one that said "Still using PowerPoint? Use our AI slide maker instead" with a picture of a three-eyed cat, as though to brag that their service makes unappetizing and unreliable slop.
It's total insanity; comparisons to tulip mania no longer even apply now that people are tossing around numbers like $500 billion when talking about their capex buildouts.
Yeah, a few times per year, I take a drive to SFO, and I am again struck by the absurdity. It's not just the current AI fixation. They always seemed bizarrely niche to me.
I assumed billboards were for mass consumer marketing. What tiny percentage of the people on these highways are actually in a position to act on any B2B tech marketing? I don't understand the economic choice to pay for a billboard like that. The ones along the highway that make sense to me are for iPhones and such.
> I assumed billboards were for mass consumer marketing.
My hunch is that billboards on I-80 through San Francisco are a vanity product. Their actual purpose isn't marketing, but to flatter the egos of the CEOs that own the service - they get to dominate the sky, the eyes, and the brains for thousands of tech commuters twice a day. The one thing I'm not sure about is whether or not the people paying for the billboards actually think that their sales are going to materially benefit, but I'm pretty sure the sellers are clear that they absolutely will not - and either way, I'm sure people see it as a mark of prestige to have an ad there.
It’s basically sifting through ore; 99% of the people who see it aren’t the target, it’s the 1% of viewers who are buyers or funders who you otherwise couldn’t directly advertise to. Same reason you see defense contractors putting up ads for weapons systems in the DC metro.
It's total insanity; comparisons to tulip mania no longer even apply now that people are tossing around numbers like $500 billion when talking about their capex buildouts.