DuckDuckGo Billboards(duckduckgo.com) |
DuckDuckGo Billboards(duckduckgo.com) |
Edit: why am I being downvoted :( I think it’s funny..
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...)
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.
"Hey, motorists. Are you [word associated with causing unnecessary deaths]? Then take a break, have a rest, save some lives!"
"Hey, motorists. Are you [same word]? Then change your browser!"
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.
We really need more competitors at search engine space but DDG is still far away from google for technical semantics search.
I've been trying to change my behavior to go directly to those sites instead of relying on the search engine to take me there. Same with thinking I might want an answer from Stack Overflow. Go directly to Stack Overflow and search there.
Sometimes I want to find blog posts etc., and if DDG doesn't do a good enough job I'll fall back to Google. My goal is to move Google further and further down the chain and try to use it as little as possible.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
I love DDG and am a long time user. I’d just prefer that nobody had billboards.
Duck.com seems nicer to me but shortening askjeeves.com to ask.com didn't seem to matter, so what do I know.
If the former, then ddg.gg works, too. If the latter... well, news.ycombinator.com ain't much better :)
I'd rebel by using the backtracking algorithm ;)
When I was a one-employee company was it wrong to spend $20,000 on billboards?
Tangentially related, DuckDuckGo is also sponsoring NPR programming. I've heard their snippet on All Things Considered a couple of times recently.
I expect other companies also have maps of their billboard locations. DDG is doing business differently by sharing theirs.
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.
Now that I've seen the billboard in question, I'd say I was spot on. Especially the parts about design and placement.