The rise of "skyvertising"
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A drone display near New York City advertising Candy Crush. Photo: Gary Hershorn/Getty Images
Look, up in the sky! It's a bird, it's a plane, it's ... an ad?
- The constant battle for our attention — and money — is going airborne.
Why it matters: Advertisements are showing up everywhere as brands get increasingly desperate for sales amid a rocky economic stretch, as Axios' Sara Fischer and Hope King recently reported.
- The sky above our heads is no exception.
Driving the news: Increasingly sophisticated drone show technology — which enables massive swarms of tiny lit-up drones to fly in sync with one another displaying well-known logos, characters and so on — is pushing "skyvertising" to new heights.
- The company behind popular mobile game Candy Crush recently launched 500 drones from New Jersey, just across the Hudson River from downtown Manhattan, to celebrate the game's 10th anniversary.
- The drones took the shape of hearts, candy, and other game and brand imagery.
- The NBA also deployed drone advertising over the Hudson to promote its 2022 Draft this past summer.
Companies that run such shows promote them as the future of aerial advertising — the 21st century equivalent of having a banner ad towed slowly across the sky.
- While some people enjoy the displays, others are dismayed to have yet another annoying ad thrust upon them.
- "I think it's outrageous to be spoiling our city's skyline for private profit," New York state Sen. Brad Hoylman told Gothamist, a local news site, regarding the Candy Crush show. "It's offensive to New Yorkers, to our local laws, to public safety and to wildlife."
Background: Using aircraft to get consumers' attention is a time-honored tradition — the country's oldest banner plane outfit, Paramount Air Service based in southern New Jersey, has been operating since 1945.
The big picture: Drone displays are just one emerging technology messing with our nighttime views.
- Astronomers and amateur stargazers alike frequently bemoan SpaceX's Starlink internet satellites, which can pollute otherwise pristine night skies.
- The counter-argument: Starlink and similar tech help provide internet access in far-flung places that are hard to connect by other means.
Go deeper: Some communities are embracing drone shows as a climate-friendly fireworks alternative, as Jennifer A. Kingson has reported.
- Miami Beach is hosting a holiday drone display this year, Axios' Martin Vassolo reports.
What's next: Forget the sky just over your head — researchers are hard at work figuring out how to develop satellite-based "space billboards."
- Similar past plans, including a "moonvertising" scheme, have largely fizzled due to cost, complexity and similar hurdles.
- But as humanity looks to colonize the Moon and beyond, you better believe we'll take our billboards along with us — eventually, anyway.
