DuckDuckGo Billboards | Hacker News Reader

DuckDuckGo Billboards

duckduckgo.com

47 pointsfukumoto55 comments

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...)

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.

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.

>this is the billboard, for reference

"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!"

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.

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.

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.

quickref.dev works fairly well

It's been my default search engine for years now and it seems to be fine for me, even with highly-technical searches. I'm resorting to !g less and less, and most of the time I don't get better results from that, either.

That was a problem for me at first, but another small change in behavior made it slightly better. I've gotten so in the habit of using my search engine as the first step on the web that I've caught myself doing silly things like searching for "mdn <some JavaScript function>" instead of just going directly to MDN and searching there. I don't know when that behavior started but it's pretty goofy. Most of the time when I'm looking up something technical, I want the official docs.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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)

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.

To be clear: is it a matter of typing it out? Or just taking up space?

If the former, then ddg.gg works, too. If the latter... well, news.ycombinator.com ain't much better :)

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.

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 backtracking algorithm ;)

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

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

Where can I get Street View Live?

Join the NSA

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’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?

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?

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.

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.

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.

Some examples here: https://old.reddit.com/r/FoundDuckDuckGo/

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.

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

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

My kids love my ddg shirt. "Ducky!"

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!

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

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

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

So... DDG is running billboard advertisements?

It seems like it. They've also been advertising heavily on NPR member stations and podcasts.

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

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

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

why there are so many billboards in bruxelles?

So EU politicians (and their staffers) see them.

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.

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

Shameless plug for my site: https://notgoogle.com

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

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