The thing is that you are not looking for a new laptop while you are driving, but you may be looking for a gas station because your "low fuel" light just turned on. And how are you going to find that gas station (which may not be exactly on the road you are driving on) if there is no sign advertising for it?

You can tell me you can pull over and look at a map, or program it on your navigation app. Not only it is not the most convenient, maybe even unsafe, but how do you think that gas station ended up on that map? Most likely the business paid for that, making it an ad.

That's the idea, we dislike that laptop ad because we usually don't buy laptops while we are on the road, it is an irrelevant attention grab, especially when that billboard is disproportionately large. But a gas station, restaurant or convenience store is relevant to a significant fraction of the people on the road, and when the sign is reasonable, we don't usually call it a billboard, even though it is an ad and not a sign like a speed limit.

„For next gas station take exit 31“ is not an ad in the sense most people understand ads, just as a „toilet“ sign on a door is not an ad for that toilet. I feel like you are constructing a case of ads that doesn’t really fit the common definition, but maybe I misunderstand.

When's the last time you stopped for food or gas on a road trip and used billboards rather than a maps app to help you choose a place to stop?

12 days ago, driving thru North Carolina. Several times.

Gas and another restrooms.

If you're looking for restrooms, did you use billboards or the road signs that advertise rest stops or gas?

Nearly every time I go on a road trip and find myself low on gas or hungry.

Mucking with apps while driving isn't particularly safe.

> And how are you going to find that gas station (which may not be exactly on the road you are driving on) if there is no sign advertising for it?

Well, actually, in all serious travel I do, I tend to know exactly where I'm going to stop for fuel before I ever set off. It's programmed into my gps as part of my route. And I'm going to find it using my gps software.

If I'm doing a less-serious trip somewhere and I don't pre-plan my stops, the way I find places to stop for fuel is I drive along on my route, and if I need fuel, when I see a "gas" station, I stop there. Again, no billboards needed.

> You can tell me you can (snip) program it on your navigation app. Not only it is not the most convenient,

I find it super convenient. Much much more convenient than running out of fuel or not knowing if I have enough to make it to a particular place.

> how do you think that gas station ended up on that map? Most likely the business paid for that, making it an ad.

Well, that's debatable. It's a listing for an amenity of a certain type (fuel station) on openstreetmap. To be in the "Fuel" category that shows up on my gps software, you'll need to sell fuel (or your entry will get edited and you'll show up in a different category). In much the same way as a sign saying "public toilet, this way" isn't an ad.

But the debate about the blurry lines of "what is an ad?" is beside the point: have you noticed how that pattern of: "I want a thing, I search for it, I find it, and then I'm not looking for it anymore" holds true here? And also how no obnoxious billboards were involved?

Even if it is an "ad", it's in an appropriate place - on openstreetmap, in the "fuel" category, and searchable by gps coordinates. I can toggle whether I want things in the 'fuel' category to be visible in my gps software very easily - I can turn that "ad" off with exactly 2 button presses if it bugs me. It's not a huge obnoxious billboard blocking my view of the countryside, lit up with 10000W of lights at night time.

This is the problem. Ads may not work as well for some people (who hate them) but they work great on others. Unfortunately, because the ones it does work on spend money, the rest of us are stuck in advertising hell.

I don’t want AR glasses for productivity or the social media bs they want to push; I want them to blight out every f’n ad that is everywhere. When they can do it in-device with no internet connection and I’ll fork over 1k for glasses immediately.

Given that so far the nearest things to successful AR glasses have been produced by Google and Meta, I think the relationship between wearing AR glasses and seeing ads is unlikely to go the way you are hoping.

(I too would love there to be AR glasses that you can put arbitrary software on, only under your control, rather than that of some rapidly-enshittifying company that has the device locked down. I suppose it's not strictly impossible that that might happen, but it doesn't seem like it's the way to bet.)

You can achieve some of that by moving to a foreign country which language you don't understand. A good experiment to realise what a relief it is to suddenly have all offline advertisements removed (and some online too, when localised based on IP)