There's one by us and my wife and I were talking about it the other day while stopped at a light...I'm not sure who the target audience for the billboard is, honestly. There's no mention of what DuckDuckGo is. In tech circles it's definitely more of a household name, but to the wider public I wouldn't expect anyone to have heard of it. The call to action is also a bit vague, and doesn't really do much for a layperson who doesn't understand the extent of the tracking, who is doing it, why it's harmful, etc.<p>Their original billboards from years ago apparently said "Google tracks you. We don't," which is a much clearer and at the very least positions themselves as a privacy-focused Google alternative.<p>(this is the billboard, for reference: <a href="https://twitter.com/DuckDuckGo/status/1266003050151411713/photo/1" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/DuckDuckGo/status/1266003050151411713/ph...</a>)
These... actually worked for me. I've been getting fed up with Google getting worse and had been intending to set my default search to DDG, and seeing the billboard was enough of a nudge to make the switch on my phone.<p>I had tried out DDG before, but the combination of Google getting worse and DDG getting better has passed the tipping point - I wonder how many other people will do the same.
So many people point out that DDG isn't being explicit with what they do in their billboards whilst also referencing that they know what it is but others probably don't.<p>I think this is intentional, I'd wager a pretty penny that most of the HN crowd represent the more technical part of the population, and so for their non-technical, friends, family members, and associates probably are the de facto "influencer" in matters of technology. DDG isn't trying to convince the lay people to switch, they are trying to convince the tech people to switch knowing that if they can capture that market they will drag everyone else with them.<p>Really it is brilliant.
I haven't seen a Duck billboard yet, but I heard its sponsorship notice on NPR earlier this week.<p>Good to see another tech company realize that off-line ads are just as valuable as online ads, if not more so.<p>It's like that article on HN a few weeks ago asking why Warby Parker succeeded while its competitors failed. To me the reason was simple: Traditional advertising. Warby Parker fully embraced television ads, radio ads, print ads, subway ads, even put up brick-and-mortar storefronts, in additional to social and digital.<p>The others spent money on Google ads and went out of business.
I really question the effectiveness of this. Here is some anecdotal evidence of billboard advertising: We took out a single test billboard downtown Toronto at a very high traffic intersection for a privacy oriented service. The billboard cost $40,000 CAD and was up for 3 months. The billboard had a domain name printed on it (along with some custom art) which only appeared on that 1 billboard. In the 3 months the domain had less than 100 visitors. For $40,0000.<p>DDG probably spent many millions of dollars on this campaign, giver the amount of billboards in different countries. Even if their performance is 10x of our test billboard, it's not worth it, by a long shot. The only people that will notice these are DDG users and feel good about it, but it likely does nothing for attracting new users.
I've seen these in Sweden. I think they are bad, because they say nothing about what the service does. They are all very vague and require you to know what the heck they are talking about like "Tired of being tracked online? We can help."<p>How am I going to go from just that message to knowing that it's about a web search engine that does not track me?<p>"Search the web without being tracked". "Privacy-first search engine". Say something like that instead, maybe?
No matter whose billboards they are, I would rather not have any. They are a blight on our environment—drive on 294 around Chicago if you don’t believe me.<p>I love DDG and am a long time user. I’d just prefer that nobody had billboards.
I know there are 10x more important things but "duckduckgo.com" is a really long domain name in my address bar. If I could stay on "duck.com" (that they also own), that would be great.
DDG's interview problem: Write a program to find the shortest path between the DDG billboards in a continent such that you make the path spell out DUCK.<p>I'd rebel by using the back<i>tracking</i> algorithm ;)
I was royally confused because I thought 'billboards' was some alt tech jargon I wasn't familiar with in relation to geography. But no, literally billboards, go figure. I haven't seen one yet but thats pretty cool
I understand why they have billboards. I'm not sure I get why they have this billboard map up, other than showing that they could.<p>Tangentially related, DuckDuckGo is also sponsoring NPR programming. I've heard their snippet on All Things Considered a couple of times recently.
What do the designs look like?<p>Billboards are an interesting form of marketing. Forget everything you know about audience data collection and careful targeting of ads with Google, FB, etc. These target virtually everybody in town, it's the giant hammer solution. The highest bidder typically goes out to the company providing a product or service that averages the highest profit per person for the ads, weighted more or less equally regardless of what group you're in.
There is one listed just up the highway from me, but I have not seen it yet. The billboard is electronic, so it's showing more than just DDG. Usually it's showing some kind of cannabis advertisement.
I gotta say, my heart sunk when I saw the headline. I totally thought ddg finally needed income and were advertising with generic non-targeted ads at the top of their page!
Shameless plug for my site: <a href="https://notgoogle.com" rel="nofollow">https://notgoogle.com</a><p>Edit: why am I being downvoted :( I think it’s funny..