I guess it just makes sense sometimes to do weird targeted public ads in specific areas?
I think people mostly don't know about Curl and PUT requests, it probably would be a huge waste of money to advertize like this in the wild. Not that I don't think ads are a huge waste in general.
TL;DR on 'why pay to put a curl request on an ad' is what you all have already said -- (1) unique concentration of tech in SF; and (2) to specifically engage software engineers. More on each...
(1) We wouldn't have run this ad in Sydney, or New York, or LA. SF definitely has an uniquely tech-oriented culture, and in particular has lots of startups in our ideal customer persona (ICP) at Stytch - in this case, engineers building B2B SaaS apps.
But in addition to the people who live in SF, even more software engineers visit the city for conferences, or events, or to fundraise. For example, while our ads are up over the next month, SF will host Stripe Sessions and POSTCon (two entire conferences focused around APIs), plus RSA (security focused).
(2) And although even with that, only a small segment of the pop will understand the ads, those people might be intrigued enough to actually look at them - and our ultimate goal is to get more engineers to look at our code & our docs. Another perk is that engineers can't use ad blockers if the ad is on a bus shelter :)
So that was a bit of the thinking for us - on why SF & why a PUT request on a billboard. We're also making the physical ads into an anchor for a 'marketing moment' for Stytch -- so pair offline ads with digital marketing, as well. So if we're successful, maybe you'll see more on that, soon.
I occasionally see tech/API ads on the London Underground. You often see ads for all sorts of niches that would probably be smaller than developer and developer-adjacent people.
Google's {First 10-digit Prime in Consecutive Digits of e}.com ad is a classic in this genre (https://www.hanshq.net/eprime.html)
I take it you haven't had the pleasure of driving thru Philadelphia. Some say you can even see skyscrapers behind the sea of lawyer ads.
This one got stuck in my mind: https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/anh-phoong-iconic-billb...
I’m glad WA banned them.