The World’s Most Famous Billboards (and the One Anyone Can Join)

Most billboards are forgettable on purpose. You glance, you drive on. A few became landmarks: places people travel to, photograph, and meet under. Here are the famous ones, and what they have in common.

Times Square, New York

The screens around One Times Square are probably the most photographed ads on earth, and they’re priced like it. Daily rates on the main LED board can reportedly reach $150,000, well above London or Tokyo (Invidis). People don’t just see these ads; they stand in the middle of them on purpose.

Piccadilly Lights, London

London’s big curved screen has a long history. The first permanent illuminated advertisement at Piccadilly Circus, for Perrier, went up in 1908, and Coca-Cola has advertised there since 1955 (City A.M.). Today it’s a single LED screen 17.56 metres high and 44.62 metres wide, with a resolution of 5490 × 2160 pixels (Landsec). That’s higher than 4K, on the side of a building.

Shibuya Crossing, Tokyo

Shibuya is less about one board and more about the crowd. It’s been called the world’s busiest pedestrian crossing, with as many as 3,000 people crossing in a single green light, under large screens mounted on the surrounding buildings (Wikipedia). Few ads anywhere get that many people looking up at once.

The Hollywood sign, Los Angeles

Here’s the fun one. The Hollywood sign started in 1923 as an advertisement: it read HOLLYWOODLAND and promoted a housing development. It was only meant to stand for about 18 months (Wikipedia). A century later, it’s one of the most recognisable landmarks in the world. Possibly the best return on an ad budget in history.

The world’s largest billboard, Madrid

In 2018 Ford took the Guinness World Records title with a 5,265 square metre ad for the EcoSport on the España Building in central Madrid, about the size of 20 tennis courts. It beat the previous record, in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, by 241.93 square metres (Autocar Professional).

The Million Dollar Homepage, the internet

The web’s most famous billboard didn’t have a street address. In 2005, Alex Tew sold a million pixels at $1 each, and brands, bands, casinos, and strangers crammed onto one page. It sold out in early 2006 and is still online today, frozen. We wrote up what happened to it.

What makes a billboard famous

Look at that list and a pattern shows up. The famous ones aren’t just big. They’re places where lots of people gather, they’ve stuck around long enough to become part of the scenery, and you can’t easily get on them. Times Square costs a fortune. Piccadilly has had the same tenants for decades. The Million Dollar Homepage is full.

The one anyone can join

That last part is why we built TheWorldsBillboard. It’s a shared online billboard where the entry price is $3, there’s no limit on how many people can join, and your space is sized by your share of what’s been contributed.

It already has a bit of everything: Archi, the very first space; Stan, the founder’s dog; Kommander Karl, a creator with millions of followers sitting next to people with a handful; and organisations like Creative Commons and Signal. You can browse every space or see how to add yours.

It’s not Times Square. But Times Square won’t take $3.