Category: Events

Posted on by

OpenAI Whistleblower, Suchir Balaji, Găsit Mort în Apartamentul din San Francisco, Sam Altman are un punct de vedere?

În ultimele săptămâni, comunitatea tehnologică și cea juridică au fost zguduite de vestea tragică a morții lui Suchir Balaji, un fost cercetător la OpenAI, care a devenit un whistleblower proeminent. Balaji, în vârstă de 26 de ani, a fost găsit decedat în apartamentul său din San Francisco pe data de 26 noiembrie, după ce poliția a fost solicitată pentru un control de bunăstare. Autoritățile au confirmat că moartea a fost determinată ca fiind sinucidere, fără dovezi de joc murdar în investigația inițială. Balaji fusese un membru al echipei OpenAI timp de aproape patru ani, contribuind la dezvoltarea unuia dintre cele mai cunoscute produse ale companiei, ChatGPT. Cu toate acestea, începând cu anul 2022, a început să aibă îngrijorări semnificative despre modul în care compania colecta și utiliza datele de pe internet pentru a-și antrena modelele AI, ridicând semne de întrebare asupra respectării legilor de copyright. În octombrie 2024, Balaji a vorbit public despre aceste preocupări, acuzând OpenAI că încalcă legislația americană privind drepturile de autor în dezvoltarea ChatGPT. Aceste afirmații au fost expuse într-un interviu publicat de The New York Times, unde a subliniat că utilizarea datelor protejate de drepturi de autor pentru antrenarea AI-ului ar putea aduce mai mult rău decât bine ecosistemului internetului. Decesul lui Balaji vine într-un moment crucial pentru OpenAI, care se confruntă cu multiple procese pentru presupuse încălcări ale drepturilor de autor. Printre acestea se numără acțiuni în justiție din partea unor publicații precum The Mercury News și The New York Times, care susțin că articolele lor au fost folosite ilegal pentru a antrena sistemele AI ale companiei. Această știre a generat un val de discuții și speculații pe platformele de socializare, cu personalități de seamă precum Elon Musk oferind reacții criptice la tragedie. OpenAI a transmis condoleanțe și a exprimat devastarea în fața acestei vești triste, subliniind că inima lor este alături de cei dragi ai lui Balaji în această perioadă dificilă. Moartea lui Suchir Balaji subliniază din nou importanța eticii și legalității în dezvoltarea tehnologiilor AI, ridicând întrebări despre cum ar trebui gestionate datele și cine ar trebui să răspundă în cazul în care aceste practici sunt discutabile din punct de vedere legal și moral. Pentru cei interesați de mai multe informații sau pentru cei care doresc să urmărească dezvoltările ulterioare ale acestei povești complexe, vă recomandăm să urmăriți știrile și actualizările din sursele de încredere.

Surse:

Posted on by

Pavel Durov, Founder of Telegram: Last month I got interviewed by police for 4 days, I was told I may be personally responsible for other people’s illegal use of Telegram

 

This was surprising for several reasons:

1. Telegram has an official representative in the EU that accepts and replies to EU requests. Its email address has been publicly available for anyone in the EU who googles “Telegram EU address for law enforcement”.

2. The French authorities had numerous ways to reach me to request assistance. As a French citizen, I was a frequent guest at the French consulate in Dubai. A while ago, when asked, I personally helped them establish a hotline with Telegram to deal with the threat of terrorism in France.

3. If a country is unhappy with an internet service, the established practice is to start a legal action against the service itself. Using laws from the pre-smartphone era to charge a CEO with crimes committed by third parties on the platform he manages is a misguided approach. Building technology is hard enough as it is. No innovator will ever build new tools if they know they can be personally held responsible for potential abuse of those tools.

Establishing the right balance between privacy and security is not easy. You have to reconcile privacy laws with law enforcement requirements, and local laws with EU laws. You have to take into account technological limitations. As a platform, you want your processes to be consistent globally, while also ensuring they are not abused in countries with weak rule of law. We’ve been committed to engaging with regulators to find the right balance. Yes, we stand by our principles: our experience is shaped by our mission to protect our users in authoritarian regimes. But we’ve always been open to dialogue.

Sometimes we can’t agree with a country’s regulator on the right balance between privacy and security. In those cases, we are ready to leave that country. We’ve done it many times. When Russia demanded we hand over “encryption keys” to enable surveillance, we refused — and Telegram got banned in Russia. When Iran demanded we block channels of peaceful protesters, we refused — and Telegram got banned in Iran. We are prepared to leave markets that aren’t compatible with our principles, because we are not doing this for money. We are driven by the intention to bring good and defend the basic rights of people, particularly in places where these rights are violated.

All of that does not mean Telegram is perfect. Even the fact that authorities could be confused by where to send requests is something that we should improve. But the claims in some media that Telegram is some sort of anarchic paradise are absolutely untrue. We take down millions of harmful posts and channels every day. We publish daily transparency reports (like this (http://t.me/stopCA) or this (https://t.me/isiswatch) ). We have direct hotlines with NGOs to process urgent moderation requests faster.

However, we hear voices saying that it’s not enough. Telegram’s abrupt increase in user count to 950M caused growing pains that made it easier for criminals to abuse our platform. That’s why I made it my personal goal to ensure we significantly improve things in this regard. We’ve already started that process internally, and I will share more details on our progress with you very soon.

I hope that the events of August will result in making Telegram — and the social networking industry as a whole — safer and stronger.

Posted on by

O banca de stat din Elveția a lansat servicii de tranzacționare criptomonede, inclusiv DOT, XRP, ADA, SOL, AVAX

Într-un pas important pentru integrarea criptomonedelor în sistemele financiare tradiționale, o bancă elvețiană de stat a lansat recent servicii de tranzacționare pentru mai multe criptomonede majore, inclusiv XRP, ADA, SOL, AVAX și DOT. Acest anunț subliniază adoptarea în creștere a activelor digitale de către instituțiile financiare reglementate, aducând astfel o mai mare legitimitate și încredere în piața criptomonedelor.

Contextul Deciziei

Această mișcare semnificativă vine pe fondul unei cereri crescânde pentru accesul la criptomonede din partea investitorilor tradiționali și al încercărilor guvernelor de a integra și reglementa aceste active în mod corespunzător. Banca elvețiană, cunoscută pentru abordarea sa progresivă și reglementată, și-a propus să ofere clienților săi posibilitatea de a tranzacționa criptomonede direct prin intermediul serviciilor bancare existente.

Criptomonedele Incluse

DOT (Polkadot)

Polkadot este proiectat pentru a facilita interoperabilitatea între diferite blockchain-uri. Proiectul, fondat de Gavin Wood, unul dintre co-fondatorii Ethereum, urmărește să creeze un internet descentralizat al blockchain-urilor.

XRP (Ripple)

XRP este cunoscută pentru utilizarea sa în facilitarea tranzacțiilor transfrontaliere rapide și ieftine. Este susținută de Ripple Labs și a câștigat popularitate datorită capacității sale de a eficientiza plățile internaționale.

ADA (Cardano)

Cardano este o platformă blockchain care urmărește să ofere o infrastructură sigură și scalabilă pentru dezvoltarea aplicațiilor descentralizate (dApps) și contractelor inteligente. ADA, moneda nativă a platformei, a văzut un interes crescut datorită actualizărilor constante și a unei comunități active de dezvoltatori.

SOL (Solana)

Solana este cunoscută pentru viteza sa ridicată de procesare a tranzacțiilor și costurile reduse. Blockchain-ul Solana a atras numeroase proiecte DeFi și NFT, consolidându-și poziția ca un jucător major în spațiul cripto.

AVAX (Avalanche)

Avalanche este un alt blockchain performant care se concentrează pe scalabilitate și interoperabilitate. Platforma permite crearea de sub-rețele personalizate și a devenit populară în rândul dezvoltatorilor de dApps și proiectelor DeFi.

 

Impactul Asupra Pieței Cripto

Această decizie a băncii elvețiene este un semnal puternic că instituțiile financiare tradiționale încep să vadă criptomonedele nu doar ca active speculative, ci și ca parte integrantă a sistemului financiar global. În plus, acest pas ar putea stimula și alte bănci și instituții să urmeze exemplul, crescând astfel lichiditatea și acceptarea pe scară largă a criptomonedelor.

Concluzii

Integrarea acestor criptomonede în oferta unei bănci de stat elvețiene reprezintă un pas înainte semnificativ în legitimizarea și adoptarea criptomonedelor la nivel global. Pe măsură ce tot mai multe instituții financiare își extind serviciile pentru a include active digitale, piața cripto ar putea vedea o creștere în utilizare și acceptare, deschizând noi oportunități atât pentru investitori cât și pentru dezvoltatori.

Posted on by

Polkadot: Navigând valurile cripto în mijlocul mișcărilor strategice ale Binance

Polkadot, un pionier în lumea blockchain-ului, se află într-un peisaj dinamic în timp ce Binance, unul dintre cele mai mari schimburi de criptomonede, face schimbări strategice semnificative. Înțelegerea acestor mișcări este crucială pentru investitorii și entuziaștii Polkadot, deoarece acestea ar putea avea implicații de anvergură pentru piață și pentru poziția Polkadot în cadrul acesteia.

Anunțurile recente ale Binance

  1. Eliminarea pool-urilor de lichiditate: Binance a anunțat eliminarea mai multor pool-uri de lichiditate, inclusiv cele care implică criptomonede majore precum BTC, ETH, ADA, DOGE, SHIB și XRP. Utilizatorii cu poziții în aceste pool-uri vor avea activele returnate automat în portofelele lor spot până pe 5 ianuarie 2024. Această decizie are scopul de a optimiza gestionarea lichidității exchange-ului și ar putea afecta volumele de tranzacționare și disponibilitatea lichidității pentru aceste active​​.
  2. Contractele futures: Binance își extinde ofertele futures prin listarea de noi contracte de livrare trimestriale USD-M și COIN-M 0927. Acestea includ opțiuni semnificative de levier pentru BTC, ETH și alte criptomonede, Polkadot (DOT) fiind și el inclus în aceste noi contracte de livrare COIN-M. Introducerea acestor contracte poate crește activitățile speculative de tranzacționare și poate influența dinamica prețurilor DOT​​.
  3. Ajustări regulatorii: Ajustările recente ale Binance în ceea ce privește reglementările, în special în Marea Britanie, au dus la delistarea mai multor perechi de tranzacționare în GBP. Această mișcare a fost necesară de noile reglementări FCA, care restricționează promovările firmelor internaționale de active digitale în țară. Deși acest lucru nu afectează direct Polkadot, subliniază mediul de reglementare tot mai strict pe care toate criptomonedele trebuie să îl navigheze​​.

Implicații pentru Polkadot

Polkadot, cunoscut pentru abordarea sa unică în ceea ce privește interoperabilitatea și funcționalitatea multi-chain, rămâne un jucător semnificativ în ecosistemul cripto. Mișcările strategice ale Binance ar putea influența Polkadot în mai multe moduri:

  1. Lichiditatea pieței: Eliminarea pool-urilor de lichiditate poate reduce lichiditatea imediată pentru Polkadot pe Binance, ceea ce poate duce la o volatilitate crescută. Cu toate acestea, ar putea, de asemenea, să concentreze lichiditatea în pool-uri mai concentrate, ceea ce ar putea stabiliza tranzacționarea pe termen lung.
  2. Oportunități de tranzacționare: Introducerea de noi contracte futures, inclusiv pentru DOT, poate oferi traderilor mai multe instrumente pentru a specula asupra mișcărilor de preț. Această activitate crescută de tranzacționare poate duce la volume mai mari și la fluctuații de preț mai semnificative.
  3. Peisajul de reglementare: Pe măsură ce Binance se adaptează la schimbările de reglementare, alte exchange-uri ar putea urma exemplul. Conformitatea Polkadot cu reglementările în evoluție va fi crucială pentru menținerea listărilor și accesibilității sale pe piețele globale.

Poziționare strategică

Pentru Polkadot, cheia va fi să valorifice punctele sale forte tehnologice și sprijinul comunității pentru a naviga eficient aceste schimbări. Implicarea cu autoritățile de reglementare, îmbunătățirea capacităților tehnologice și menținerea parteneriatelor de lichiditate robuste vor fi strategii esențiale în viitor.

În concluzie, deși mișcările strategice recente ale Binance prezintă provocări și oportunități, abordarea inovatoare a Polkadot față de tehnologia blockchain îl poziționează bine pentru a se adapta și a prospera. Rămânerea informată și agilă va fi vitală pentru părțile interesate Polkadot pe măsură ce peisajul cripto continuă să evolueze.

Posted on by

2023 International Mathematical Olympiad: Romania 4th place in the world after China, USA and South Korea

https://www.imo-official.org/year_individual_r.aspx?year=2023

https://imo2023.jp/en/news/detail.php?id=82 

 

Posted on by

Forumul Anual al Plăților, găzduit de Banca Națională a României, organizat de CEE Perspective, partener Leichmann Weifert

Cea de-a doua ediție a Forumului Anual al Plăților din Europa Centrală și de Est a avut loc pe 24 mai 2023.

Am avut plăcerea de a avea experți care și-au împărtășit opiniile cu privire la cele mai recente evoluții în materie de reglementare și inovare în domeniul plăților în regiunea ECE, la impactul tehnologiilor disruptive asupra industriei serviciilor financiare și la apariția unor noi modele de afaceri în industria plăților.

Forumul a oferit o ocazie excelentă pentru crearea de parteneriate, schimb de idei și propuneri cu experți din industrie și autorități publice.

Posted on by

Event invitation: Annual Payments Forum, National Bank of Romania, 24th May 2023

We‘re glad to invite you:

LEW.RO Software Solutions &
LEW.AM Asset Management, partners for the
National Bank of Romania Event
Annual Payments Forum,
Wednesday, 24th May 2023

You can register here: https://ceeperspective.eu/current-event/

#platforms #payments #blockchain #banking #AI #assetmanagement

Posted on by

THE TWITTER FILES part 2, TWITTER’S SECRET BLACKLISTS

1. A new #TwitterFiles investigation reveals that teams of Twitter employees build blacklists, prevent disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics—all in secret, without informing users.
2. Twitter once had a mission “to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.” Along the way, barriers nevertheless were erected.
3. Take, for example, Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) who argued that Covid lockdowns would harm children. Twitter secretly placed him on a “Trends Blacklist,” which prevented his tweets from trending. Image

 

 

4. Or consider the popular right-wing talk show host, Dan Bongino (@dbongino), who at one point was slapped with a “Search Blacklist.” Image

 

 

5. Twitter set the account of conservative activist Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) to “Do Not Amplify.” Image

 

 

6. Twitter denied that it does such things. In 2018, Twitter’s Vijaya Gadde (then Head of Legal Policy and Trust) and Kayvon Beykpour (Head of Product) said: “We do not shadow ban.” They added: “And we certainly don’t shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology.”
7. What many people call “shadow banning,” Twitter executives and employees call “Visibility Filtering” or “VF.” Multiple high-level sources confirmed its meaning.
8. “Think about visibility filtering as being a way for us to suppress what people see to different levels. It’s a very powerful tool,” one senior Twitter employee told us.
9. “VF” refers to Twitter’s control over user visibility. It used VF to block searches of individual users; to limit the scope of a particular tweet’s discoverability; to block select users’ posts from ever appearing on the “trending” page; and from inclusion in hashtag searches.
10. All without users’ knowledge.
11. “We control visibility quite a bit. And we control the amplification of your content quite a bit. And normal people do not know how much we do,” one Twitter engineer told us. Two additional Twitter employees confirmed.
12. The group that decided whether to limit the reach of certain users was the Strategic Response Team – Global Escalation Team, or SRT-GET. It often handled up to 200 “cases” a day.
13. But there existed a level beyond official ticketing, beyond the rank-and-file moderators following the company’s policy on paper. That is the “Site Integrity Policy, Policy Escalation Support,” known as “SIP-PES.”
14. This secret group included Head of Legal, Policy, and Trust (Vijaya Gadde), the Global Head of Trust & Safety (Yoel Roth), subsequent CEOs Jack Dorsey and Parag Agrawal, and others.
15. This is where the biggest, most politically sensitive decisions got made. “Think high follower account, controversial,” another Twitter employee told us. For these “there would be no ticket or anything.”
16. One of the accounts that rose to this level of scrutiny was @libsoftiktok—an account that was on the “Trends Blacklist” and was designated as “Do Not Take Action on User Without Consulting With SIP-PES.” Image
17. The account—which Chaya Raichik began in November 2020 and now boasts over 1.4 million followers—was subjected to six suspensions in 2022 alone, Raichik says. Each time, Raichik was blocked from posting for as long as a week.
18. Twitter repeatedly informed Raichik that she had been suspended for violating Twitter’s policy against “hateful conduct.”
19. But in an internal SIP-PES memo from October 2022, after her seventh suspension, the committee acknowledged that “LTT has not directly engaged in behavior violative of the Hateful Conduct policy.” See here: Image

 

 

20. The committee justified her suspensions internally by claiming her posts encouraged online harassment of “hospitals and medical providers” by insinuating “that gender-affirming healthcare is equivalent to child abuse or grooming.”
21. Compare this to what happened when Raichik herself was doxxed on November 21, 2022. A photo of her home with her address was posted in a tweet that has garnered more than 10,000 likes.
22. When Raichik told Twitter that her address had been disseminated she says Twitter Support responded with this message: “We reviewed the reported content, and didn’t find it to be in violation of the Twitter rules.” No action was taken. The doxxing tweet is still up. Image
23. In internal Slack messages, Twitter employees spoke of using technicalities to restrict the visibility of tweets and subjects. Here’s Yoel Roth, Twitter’s then Global Head of Trust & Safety, in a direct message to a colleague in early 2021: Image
24. Six days later, in a direct message with an employee on the Health, Misinformation, Privacy, and Identity research team, Roth requested more research to support expanding “non-removal policy interventions like disabling engagements and deamplification/visibility filtering.” Image
25. Roth wrote: “The hypothesis underlying much of what we’ve implemented is that if exposure to, e.g., misinformation directly causes harm, we should use remediations that reduce exposure, and limiting the spread/virality of content is a good way to do that.”
26. He added: “We got Jack on board with implementing this for civic integrity in the near term, but we’re going to need to make a more robust case to get this into our repertoire of policy remediations – especially for other policy domains.”

27. There is more to come on this story, which was reported by @AbigailShrier@ShellenbergerMD @NellieBowles @IsaacGrafstein and the team The Free Press @TheFP.

Keep up with this unfolding story here and at our brand new website: thefp.com.

28. The authors have broad and expanding access to Twitter’s files. The only condition we agreed to was that the material would first be published on Twitter.

 

Posted on by

THE TWITTER FILES part 1, thousands of internal documents obtained by sources at Twitter

1. Thread: THE TWITTER FILES
2. What you’re about to read is the first installment in a series, based upon thousands of internal documents obtained by sources at Twitter.
3. The “Twitter Files” tell an incredible story from inside one of the world’s largest and most influential social media platforms. It is a Frankensteinian tale of a human-built mechanism grown out the control of its designer.
4. Twitter in its conception was a brilliant tool for enabling instant mass communication, making a true real-time global conversation possible for the first time.
5. In an early conception, Twitter more than lived up to its mission statement, giving people “the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.”
6. As time progressed, however, the company was slowly forced to add those barriers. Some of the first tools for controlling speech were designed to combat the likes of spam and financial fraudsters.

7. Slowly, over time, Twitter staff and executives began to find more and more uses for these tools. Outsiders began petitioning the company to manipulate speech as well: first a little, then more often, then constantly.
8. By 2020, requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine. One executive would write to another: “More to review from the Biden team.” The reply would come back: “Handled.” Image
9. Celebrities and unknowns alike could be removed or reviewed at the behest of a political party: Image
10.Both parties had access to these tools. For instance, in 2020, requests from both the Trump White House and the Biden campaign were received and honored. However:
11. This system wasn’t balanced. It was based on contacts. Because Twitter was and is overwhelmingly staffed by people of one political orientation, there were more channels, more ways to complain, open to the left (well, Democrats) than the right. opensecrets.org/orgs/twitter/s…Image

12. The resulting slant in content moderation decisions is visible in the documents you’re about to read. However, it’s also the assessment of multiple current and former high-level executives.
Okay, there was more throat-clearing about the process, but screw it, let’s jump forward
16. The Twitter Files, Part One: How and Why Twitter Blocked the Hunter Biden Laptop Story
17. On October 14, 2020, the New York Post published BIDEN SECRET EMAILS, an expose based on the contents of Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop:

18. Twitter took extraordinary steps to suppress the story, removing links and posting warnings that it may be “unsafe.” They even blocked its transmission via direct message, a tool hitherto reserved for extreme cases, e.g. child pornography.
19. White House spokeswoman Kaleigh McEnany was locked out of her account for tweeting about the story, prompting a furious letter from Trump campaign staffer Mike Hahn, who seethed: “At least pretend to care for the next 20 days.” Image

20.This led public policy executive Caroline Strom to send out a polite WTF query. Several employees noted that there was tension between the comms/policy teams, who had little/less control over moderation, and the safety/trust teams: Image
21. Strom’s note returned the answer that the laptop story had been removed for violation of the company’s “hacked materials” policy: web.archive.org/web/2019071714…Image
22. Although several sources recalled hearing about a “general” warning from federal law enforcement that summer about possible foreign hacks, there’s no evidence – that I’ve seen – of any government involvement in the laptop story. In fact, that might have been the problem…
23. The decision was made at the highest levels of the company, but without the knowledge of CEO Jack Dorsey, with former head of legal, policy and trust Vijaya Gadde playing a key role.
24. “They just freelanced it,” is how one former employee characterized the decision. “Hacking was the excuse, but within a few hours, pretty much everyone realized that wasn’t going to hold. But no one had the guts to reverse it.”
25.You can see the confusion in the following lengthy exchange, which ends up including Gadde and former Trust and safety chief Yoel Roth. Comms official Trenton Kennedy writes, “I’m struggling to understand the policy basis for marking this as unsafe”: Image
26. By this point “everyone knew this was fucked,” said one former employee, but the response was essentially to err on the side of… continuing to err. Image
27. Former VP of Global Comms Brandon Borrman asks, “Can we truthfully claim that this is part of the policy?” Image
28. To which former Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker again seems to advise staying the non-course, because “caution is warranted”: Image
29. A fundamental problem with tech companies and content moderation: many people in charge of speech know/care little about speech, and have to be told the basics by outsiders. To wit:
30. In one humorous exchange on day 1, Democratic congressman Ro Khanna reaches out to Gadde to gently suggest she hop on the phone to talk about the “backlash re speech.” Khanna was the only Democratic official I could find in the files who expressed concern. Image
Gadde replies quickly, immediately diving into the weeds of Twitter policy, unaware Khanna is more worried about the Bill of Rights: Image

32.Khanna tries to reroute the conversation to the First Amendment, mention of which is generally hard to find in the files: Image
33.Within a day, head of Public Policy Lauren Culbertson receives a ghastly letter/report from Carl Szabo of the research firm NetChoice, which had already polled 12 members of congress – 9 Rs and 3 Democrats, from “the House Judiciary Committee to Rep. Judy Chu’s office.” Image
34.NetChoice lets Twitter know a “blood bath” awaits in upcoming Hill hearings, with members saying it’s a “tipping point,” complaining tech has “grown so big that they can’t even regulate themselves, so government may need to intervene.” Image
35.Szabo reports to Twitter that some Hill figures are characterizing the laptop story as “tech’s Access Hollywood moment”: Image
36.Twitter files continued:
“THE FIRST AMENDMENT ISN’T ABSOLUTE”
Szabo’s letter contains chilling passages relaying Democratic lawmakers’ attitudes. They want “more” moderation, and as for the Bill of Rights, it’s “not absolute” Image
An amazing subplot of the Twitter/Hunter Biden laptop affair was how much was done without the knowledge of CEO Jack Dorsey, and how long it took for the situation to get “unfucked” (as one ex-employee put it) even after Dorsey jumped in.
While reviewing Gadde’s emails, I saw a familiar name – my own. Dorsey sent her a copy of my Substack article blasting the incident Image
There are multiple instances in the files of Dorsey intervening to question suspensions and other moderation actions, for accounts across the political spectrum
The problem with the “hacked materials” ruling, several sources said, was that this normally required an official/law enforcement finding of a hack. But such a finding never appears throughout what one executive describes as a “whirlwind” 24-hour, company-wide mess. Image

 

Posted on by

What is Digital Outdoor Advertising? Traditional Billboards vs Digital Billboards, Who Billboard Advertising Is Right For

Digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising is a part of out-of-home (OOH) advertising. It is powered by digital technology that allows tracking, flexibility, personalization, and interactivity.

Digital outdoor advertising encompasses various formats, including digital outdoor signage, billboards, mall kiosks, digital boards, etc. A Nielsen study showed that OOH advertising delivers quadrupled activity on a dollar spent compared to its offline competitors – TV, radio, and print.

How does DOOH benefit brands?

The outdoor medium forms a significant part of any brand’s marketing campaign. DOOH advertising is now interactive and employed for better brand-customer relationships.

One of the biggest advantages of outdoor advertising is its non-interfering quality. Unlike online ads or TV ads, digital outdoor advertising can be artistic without being an inconvenience. For advertisers, too, it provides advantages. The user cannot skip a DOOH since ad blockers cannot function in this medium.

In the pandemic world, digital outdoor advertising has proven to be very useful as it is the ideal channel to provide real-time communication to the masses in a contactless world. Digital outdoor signage became the go-to option to display safety measures and public health messages.

Traditional Billboards vs Digital Billboards

Physical billboards have a lot of advantages over digital billboard advertising. Placement of physical billboard ads is widely available because the infrastructure has existed for several decades. Additionally, printed advertisements are not subject to glitches and power outages like digital billboards.

Traditional Billboards
Digital Billboards
Typically less expensive
More dynamic ads, which make ads more effective
More existing inventory
Better targeting with the ability to display ads during specific hours of the days or days of the week
Not subject to glitches
More flexibility as you can update and optimize ads quickly

Who Billboard Advertising Is Right For

Billboard advertising works best for businesses boosting brand awareness or advertising specific store locations. Billboards located on highways that advertise local businesses are extremely actionable because the audience is already nearby. In addition, billboards are a great way to promote your brand if you don’t need immediate conversions.

If you’re still on the fence about whether or not billboard advertising is right for your business, consider the following questions:

  • Does your product pass the eight-second rule? If you can’t make your pitch in eight seconds, then billboards are not for you. The stagnant nature of traditional billboards is also ineffective if your message requires interpretation.
  • Is your product relevant to a mass audience? If your product is only relevant to 10% of the population, you’ll waste a lot of money on “unnecessary” billboard impressions. For example, a distributor of vegan food products likely only appeals to the 7% of Americans who identify as vegan.

The main benefit of Digital advertising is that you can reach a large number of people within a specific geographical area. This is great for those starting a business or local businesses in general, whose target audience is very broad, yet within one geographic area. For example, everyone eats, so restaurant digital ads are effective.

  • Restaurants and shops
  • Real estate agents
  • Law firms
  • Local financial institutions
  • Medical facilities
  • Fitness centers
  • Location education providers
  • Home services (e.g., heating and oil, landscaping, construction)
  • Nonprofits and public service announcements