Comment by wk_end
2 months ago
In theory, anyway, billboards are prevalent sans regulation because they’re (among) the most efficient forms of advertising. That is, if the advertisers would only be spending some money on astroturf campaigns and product placement instead of billboards, it must be because they’re less effective than billboards - otherwise they’d just put that money towards the astroturf campaigns and product placement in the first place.
So banning billboards makes advertising less efficient. In theory, anyway.
If you step on a nail you'll be less efficient at walking for a bit. Causing random harm to people isn't really the basis for a reasonable system of rules. The regulators could cause random harm to advertisers. Society can cause random harm to anyone. You're not going to make consumers (or anyone else, for that matter) better off.
I'd much rather be fed efficient advertising on a billboard than have to worry about more astroturfing, that stuff is insidious. Cure substantially worse than the disease once advertisers have to deceptive and have even bigger incentives to hide than they already do.
And much as the anti-ads people want to skip the point, nobody ever even established that advertising is a negative thing that advertisers need to be harmed for.