
DuckDuckGo Billboards - fukumoto
https://duckduckgo.com/billboards/
======
ericwood
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.

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.

(this is the billboard, for reference:
[https://twitter.com/DuckDuckGo/status/1266003050151411713/ph...](https://twitter.com/DuckDuckGo/status/1266003050151411713/photo/1))

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CivBase
Yes, I really wish they made it clear they're a search engine. If I didn't
already know better, I would probably think they're a security consulting firm
or some kind of native app for my computer (like antivirus for trackers).

Regardless, I hope this at least makes them more recognizable to the general
public. People often put more trust into names and brands they frequently see.

The billboards I saw in Des Moines the other day were definitely in prominant
locations and the design is vibrant enough to grab attention.

~~~
ericwood
You're right, there is something to be said for this billboard being more
about building name recognition than anything else...I just worry that they're
jumping the gun on it a bit, and honestly would have loved to have seen
something that made a case for privacy. That would be very difficult to do
with a billboard, though.

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schimmy_changa
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.

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.

~~~
DethNinja
I also did the same but DDG is still worse than google for technical search.

We really need more competitors at search engine space but DDG is still far
away from google for technical semantics search.

~~~
ogre_codes
Sometimes it does, but it's good enough that I've switched to DDG as the
default and just use !g when the main DDG search misses the mark. Not having
to deal with Google cruft anymore is worth it.

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hpoe
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.

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.

Really it is brilliant.

~~~
reaperducer
There's also the delicious notion of Google noticing thousands of people
around the world suddenly using Google to search for "Duck Duck Go."

Google's search volume is probably such that it wouldn't even be a blip on the
radar, but it's fun to think about.

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reaperducer
I haven't seen a Duck billboard yet, but I heard its sponsorship notice on NPR
earlier this week.

Good to see another tech company realize that off-line ads are just as
valuable as online ads, if not more so.

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.

The others spent money on Google ads and went out of business.

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llarsson
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."

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?

"Search the web without being tracked". "Privacy-first search engine". Say
something like that instead, maybe?

~~~
burkaman
I think that's probably intentional. They also have browser extensions, a
mobile browser app, and presumably want people to see them as more than just a
search engine.

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pselbert
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.

I love DDG and am a long time user. I’d just prefer that nobody had
billboards.

~~~
IpV8
Come to Maine. Billboards are illegal here! All of the surrounding states talk
about how beautiful it is here, I think that a huge part of the beauty is the
lack of forced exposure to advertisement on our highways. (though the
beautiful and well preserved landscape and coastline doesn't hurt either)

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ArmandGrillet
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.

~~~
jdofaz
In my mind it is memorized as duck.com, its what I type when need to load
their homepage directly and its the domain I tell people if it comes up in
conversation.

Duck.com seems nicer to me but shortening askjeeves.com to ask.com didn't seem
to matter, so what do I know.

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kirubakaran
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.

I'd rebel by using the back _tracking_ algorithm ;)

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yegor
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.

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.

~~~
reaperducer
If you only blame the billboard for the failure, then you don't really
understand billboard advertising.

Placement, design, message, color, product, and a dozen other factors go into
whether a billboard message works or not. It's why big companies hire
advertising agencies to do these things for them. The agencies know the
nuances of making it work, just like hiring an expert to do your AdSense buy.

I used to own a web site that advertised on billboards in the early 2000's. It
worked pretty well. It helped that it was very geographic-specific, and the
billboards were along major roads in those geographies.

~~~
yegor
All these factors are not going to make 3+ orders of magnitude difference
required to make this even remotely worthwhile. Here is the previously
mentioned billboard for reference:
[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D0XQvm7X4AIHhnQ?format=jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D0XQvm7X4AIHhnQ?format=jpg)

As for your anecdotal evidence, from early 2000, this is not relevant anymore.
People are looking at their smartphones while walking outside/sitting in
traffic. The only reason billboard advertising still exists is because 99.9%
of advertisers cannot quantify the effectiveness of their efforts.

~~~
reaperducer
_Here is the previously mentioned billboard for reference:_

Now that I've seen the billboard in question, I'd say I was spot on.
Especially the parts about design and placement.

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kirubakaran
I wish clicking on a pin showed a photo of the billboard.

~~~
lepouet
If only there was something that showed street level pictures of places, we
could call it Street View, that would be awesome.

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generalpass
Where can I get Street View Live?

~~~
ideals
Join the NSA

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beznet
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

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gtbcb
I’m curious; how does this make financial sense? Maybe 3-5k billboards at
maybe $500-$2k/mo, so $1.5m-$10m per month for a 100 person company?

~~~
reaperducer
I'm not sure how the number of employees factors into this. Is there some
upper limit on the amount a company is allowed to spend on advertising per
employee?

When I was a one-employee company was it wrong to spend $20,000 on billboards?

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lenwood
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.

Tangentially related, DuckDuckGo is also sponsoring NPR programming. I've
heard their snippet on All Things Considered a couple of times recently.

~~~
markstos
They probably wanted it internally to track where their billboards were, and
it was easy enough to make it public at that point.

I expect other companies also have maps of their billboard locations. DDG is
doing business differently by sharing theirs.

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vortico
What do the designs look like?

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.

~~~
burkaman
Some examples here:
[https://old.reddit.com/r/FoundDuckDuckGo/](https://old.reddit.com/r/FoundDuckDuckGo/)

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HissingMachine
For some foreign languages and more obscure searches !g is still the most
useful feature in DDG. But the duck has still been my default for years now.

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encoderer
We have one in Berkeley. My 2 year old daughter loves it. I guess this is how
branding works.

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couchand
My kid loves it too. "It's the duck from your shirt!"

~~~
MaxPower9
My kids love my ddg shirt. "Ducky!"

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rootusrootus
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.

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mjgoeke
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!

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themew
We've got them in our small town along the panhandle of Florida. Amazing to
see them advertising in major intersections around town.

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cameronfraser
I saw one driving down the I-10 I think, don't remember where exactly though,
I want to say it was in California around Indio

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spartas
Looks like the only U.S. states without them are Alaska, Hawaii, Maine, New
Hampshire, South Dakota, Vermont, and West Virginia

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generalpass
So... DDG is running billboard advertisements?

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freedomben
I live in Salt Lake area (Utah) and DDG has a very prominent billboard on our
main highway. It's glorious :-)

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DanCarvajal
Also in SL, if they could replace the Banjo billboards that'd be great.

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jlelse
None in Germany, any reasons? Google is very common here and more people
should get aware of other alternatives.

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_ZeD_
why there are so many billboards in bruxelles?

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Signez
Lobbying? It makes sense to make your name resonate to European Commission
employees (and MEPs and their collaborators, and European journalists) that
live, travel or work there.

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gjsman-1000
Saw them a few times on a drive from MN to TN.

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ivies0ar
Shameless plug for my site: [https://notgoogle.com](https://notgoogle.com)

Edit: why am I being downvoted :( I think it’s funny..

