mexican billboards

January 13th, 2010 • posts i've written

CUT-UP MX is a blog run by Norman Palm that catalogs the curiosity that is the Mexican billboard.

Chopped up, partly exchanged and randomly assembled they often become exciting commercial collages. Rumors say that once a company’s advertising time is over and a new hirer is still to be found, the pieces are mixed up to disguise the sales message.

I find it wonderful that a scheme concocted to ensure that advertisers don’t gain extra impressions has been turned into an art and photography project.

But I also wonder…

Remnant banner space on the web is usually filled by some random Google Adwords unit selling something no one wants to buy in an aesthetic you’ll never want to click on. So what happens? You learn to ignore those ad units of a site. Banner blindness.

What if unsold banner space contained something like the Mexican billboard – a creative collage or artistic bit of nonsense?

What if instead of trying to squeeze one more penny out of an advertiser, Google decided to preserve those placements (and your focus on them) by serving art when an ad couldn’t be found?

Related posts:

1. saving lives with a banner ad

Tags: Advertising, art

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5 Responses (add your comment)

1. lilmissjen January 13, 2010

   at 11:31 am

   Google Adwords text (or display) ads in the content network aren’t remnant, they’re contextually-placed units. Supposedly, if there are not advertisers bidding on some keyword-related element of that content, the ad space will just not appear.

   But, the art idea is a neat one.

2. Bud Caddell January 13, 2010

   at 11:34 am

   @Jen,

   Thanks for the correction.

   I guess I’ve never seen an empty spot (a bit hard, I guess).

   I wonder how often that happens a day across the whole platform…

3. lilmissjen January 13, 2010

   at 11:50 am

   It won’t be empty, it just won’t be there. In terms of Google Adwords units, that is.

   There are all kinds of crap networks that buy remnant banner space (for super cheaps), don’t get me wrong. But you won’t find Google’s stuff there.

4. Bud Caddell January 13, 2010

   at 12:32 pm

   I was trying a dumb pun with the “never seen the empty spot.” Didn’t work.

   I wonder what would happen if you took any ad server for any site, let’s say Gizmodo, and turned 5% of the impressions over to an art collage – would you predict seeing any kind of rise in CTR (or if we ran an eye tracking study, would we see more attention paid to that area?)?

5. lilmissjen January 13, 2010

   at 1:05 pm

   Ha! I had my media planning hat on, and was being very professional. Silly me.

   From my experience and testing, CTR trends upwards dramatically with increases in the relevance, size, etc., of the call-to-action. I am GUESSING that something with no call-to-action would attract a very limited audience (artists).

   But, the eye-tracking study, now that would be something.

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