Subway commuters are inundated with advertisements on virtually every surface they come across along their daily journey, from the stairs leading to each platform to the passenger cars themselves. Places where a captive audience will stand around staring at the walls are an advertiser’s feast, but not everyone wants that kind of consumerism shoved down their throats every day. Enter ‘NO AD,‘ an augmented reality app that allows you to replace those ads with art.

Created by The Subway Art Blog and The Heavy Projects, which got dozens of artists to participate, the app for smartphones and tablets enables users to look at their environment in an altered way. Hold up your device and the ad that’s right in front of you will transform into a work of art before your eyes.

Available for free on iOS and Android, NO AD works with dozens of ads, turning your commute into a ‘curated art experience. You can even watch a short film. The app developers plan to update the featured art frequently to keep up with the frantic pace of urban advertising.

While viewing the world through an electronic device isn’t exactly ideal, especially if hundreds of commuters started clogging up the subway stations to stand around holding their tablets at arms’ length, it’s a neat example of high-tech DIY Urbanism.

Some billboards are just begging to be subverted, while others take us by surprise with their creativity and ingenuity. But whether you hate these humongous advertising platforms or think they’re an important part of modern society, billboards probably aren’t going away anytime soon. That’s why design team Apostrophy’s has attempted to make them more multi-purpose with the intriguing Billboard House.

Currently on display in Bangkok, Thailand for the Baan Iae Suan Fair, ‘Billboard House’ preserves the current advertising function of billboards, but adds an extra element: an elevated private domicile. Apostrophy’s explains that all three parties would benefit from this arrangement: the advertisers and billboard agencies who still get what they need out of the billboard, and the owner/dweller, who gets an extra income from the advertising rent.

The multi-story home is surprisingly spacious, and the views certainly can’t be beat. Rather than a conventional billboard post, the home sits on a trailer base that enables it to be moved when necessary. Solar cells on the roof provide energy, and the rails offer space to grow hydroponic plants.

While not everyone would be crazy about having their home plastered with ads (especially if those ads were offensive or objectionable), such an arrangement democratizes the space that is currently given over to advertisig in cramped urban locations, making smart use of it. That is, as long as these homes are replacing existing billboards and not just adding even more visual clutter.

(images via: martin reis)

Last year, Toronto citizens asked themselves a question that led to an unprecedented law: Why should we have to look at so many billboards? In April 2010, the city instituted taxes and restrictions on public advertising, but some ad companies decided to break the law – and those rogue billboards were themselves subject of guerrilla action recently when activists covered them with art.

The large-scale urban street hack was organized by Toronto Street Advertising Takeover (TOSAT) and plastered 41 illegal advertising pillars and 20 10′-by-20′ billboards with 85 prints by a variety of artists, from graffiti-style urban art to whimsical drawings of birds.

Toronto has long had restrictions on billboards, but they were complex and difficult to enforce. April’s bylaw introduced a new tax on billboards that funds art in public spaces and pays for enforcement, but according to activists, companies like Pattison Outdoor Advertising – which was targeted by the guerrilla action – continue to flout the law.

“When you walk through the city and you know you have no control over that space, it’s like walking through a mall,” said ‘Posterchild’, a Torontoist.com contributor who was involved with the project. “It’s more about feeling at home. And it’s impossible for me to feel at home in my city if I don’t feel I’m a part of it.”

Outdoor advertising is all around us – on billboards, benches and even stairs. So it was only a matter of time before the ads took to the streets themselves in the form of stunning 3D chalk drawings, paint, stickers and even “reverse graffiti” which cleans messages onto dirty pavement. These 14 urban street ads sometimes blur the line between guerilla art and guerilla marketing, drawing in crowds and using their respective environments in clever and creative ways.

Water is Life Painted Street Ad

(image via: guerilla promos)

The town of Drachten in the Netherlands got an extreme makeover in 2008 when artist Henk Hofstra painted a kilometer-long strip of the main road a pale blue color. The striking shade is meant to give citizens of the town an idea of what life was like in Drachten back when this road was a canal. They’ll have to get used to the concept, because Drachten is in the process of reverting back to life on a waterway.

Folgers Manhole Ad

(image via: gothamist)

When you see a steaming manhole in the streets of New York City, you’re probably reminded of the hot, smelly sewer that lurks beneath. But Folgers decided to give it a new connotation with street sticker ads that transform manholes into hot, enticing cups of coffee. Though the effect is cool, Gothamist notes that the smell doesn’t exactly match up with the imagery.

Coca-Cola 3D Chalk Street Ad

(image via: julian beever)

One of the world’s best-known street chalk artists, Julian Beever, creates jaw-dropping drawings in the streets that look incredibly three-dimensional when viewed from a certain angle. This one, an ad for Coca-Cola, is among his most effective works.

Vodafone Retro Arcade Games Street Ad

(image via: marketing alternatif)

Vodafone made cult retro arcade games like Pac Man and Space Invaders available to play on their mobile phones, and publicized it with a series of attention-grabbing chalk street ads.

Guerilla Cardboard Street Ad

(image via: brainstorm brand)

Pedestrians in London were provided with a vivid reminder of the harsh realities of homelessness as a series of 30 cardboard ‘beds’ were placed around the city. Each piece of cardboard was inscribed with the message, “Loving the snow? Try sleeping in it. Help get homeless people out of the cold for good. Crisis.org.uk.”

Capitalism: A Love Story – Green Graffiti

(image via: green graffiti)

While the greenest form of graffiti may just be made from moss, there’s another way to send a message on the street without using toxic spray paint: pressure washing. Layers of urban grime can be sprayed away in a pattern using a stencil, for an environmentally friendly ad that fades away with time. This one by Amsterdam ad agency Green Graffiti promotes the Michael Moore documentary ‘Capitalism: A Love Story’.

IKEA 3D Chalk Street Ad

(image via: street advertising services)

An advertising firm called Street Advertising Services painted a series trompe l’oeil 3D street ads depicting IKEA products in a room, designed to draw in passersby as promotions staff passed out IKEA catalogs.

Eminem Ad Campaign – Green Graffiti

(image via: green graffiti)

Rapper Eminem got in on the green graffiti trend with an ad campaign for his album ‘Relapse’. Subtle and impermanent, this form of street marketing is a great example of using ambient space effectively.

Ballantine’s Whisky 3D Chalk Street Ad

(image via: moodie reports)

Chalk artist Julian Beever also created this street drawing of a bottle of Ballantine’s Scotch whisky “leaving an impression”.

Earth Hour – Green Graffiti

(image via: green graffiti)

To promote Earth Hour – a global event in which the power is turned off for an hour to raise awareness about climate change – with wasteful paper and toxic inks would be hypocritical to say the least. This approach, using the “green graffiti” pressure washing method, gets the message across in a way that fits the event perfectly.

Sewer Grate BBQ Street Ad

(image via: sandeep makam)

Like the Folgers manhole cover ad, this guerilla street ad takes advantage of visual associations, using sewer grates to advertise BBQ grills. It’s clever, but the effectiveness is questionable given that most people aren’t likely to look at a sewer grate and think, “Mmmm – barbecue!”

Reserved for Drunk Drivers Street Ad

(image via: advertolog)

The consequences of drinking and driving are vividly illustrated in this unconventional ad, featuring a parking space half on the sidewalk, marked with the words “Reserved for drunk drivers.”

Open Manhole Awareness Street Ad

(image via: adrants)

Manhole cover thefts have risen over the past few years as opportunists sell them for scrap metal, and it’s a big enough problem in China to merit an ad campaign warning of the dangers of missing covers. Serious injury could result from falling into one – perhaps serious enough to cause paralysis.

Canon S1 Guerilla Street Ad

(image via: the raw feed)

That’s quite a zoom. Canon advertised its S1 camera model in 2006 with this sticker street ad. Not only does the column provide the perfect shape for the lens, its base sticks up from street level just far enough to give the camera a slightly three-dimensional look.

Billboards are so ubiquitous in the modern world, many people barely even notice them anymore. So, some advertisers have gotten ultra-creative with their outdoor advertising, relying on eye-catching imagery and unusual proportions to grab the attention of the public. From shocking props like sliced pigeons to a billboard you can eat, these 15 clever advertising campaigns expand outside the box to interact with the world outside.

Pigeons vs. Razor

(image via: MasterCom)

German razor company Martor Solingen “demonstrated” the sharpness of their product with this clever billboard, strewing the ground around it with sliced-up rubber pigeons.

Paint Comes At You Fast

(image via: Ads of the World)

Nationwide insurance turned a fictional paint company’s billboard into a colorful, messy disaster in this unique ad, spilling a massive puddle of yellow paint down the side of a building and into a parking lot, even covering several vehicles.

Adidas World Cup

(image via:  Hungry for Ads)

Adidas was clearly very excited for the 2006 World Cup when they unveiled a series of billboard ads so attention-grabbing, they risked causing accidents. This particular billboard depicts a soccer player – or football player, if you’re outside the U.S. – stretching over a road like a mythological giant.

Bic Shaves the Grass

(image via: Arturo de Albornoz)

It must be tough to come up with a creative ad campaign for disposable razors – after all, how many times can you show a man’s smooth hairless face and still get people to notice? This billboard takes a different tack, with a giant razor seemingly giving a stretch of grass a nice close shave.

McDonald’s Billboard Sundial

(image via: dsgnwrld)

What time is it? Pancake-o’-clock, if you go by this incredibly creative billboard ‘sundial’, installed by fast food giant McDonalds in Chicago in 2006. The Leo Burnett ad agency commissioned for the project worked with an engineer to choose the best possible location to achieve the best effect, with an aluminum replica of the iconic golden arches casting its shadow over a certain menu item each hour.

Nike Treadmill for Charity

(image via: billboardom)

Nike encouraged passersby to stop and walk or run a while on an interactive, ground level billboard with a built-in treadmill, located in Mexico. For every kilometer run, Nike donated a certain amount of money to Unicef.

Penline Tape: Strong Enough to Support a Billboard

(image via: Ads of the World)

Penline must have felt pretty confident in their product to actually demonstrate it in a billboard. If the tape had failed, the ad would have been disastrous, but it worked well enough to win the ad a Cannes Lions 2007 Silver award.

Economist Light Bulb

(image via: adpunch)

Talk about a bright idea: this billboard by the Economist uses a motion sensor to detect people walking beneath it, and the light bulb illuminates at just the right moment.

Formula Toothcare: Builds Strong Teeth

(image via: Ads of the World)

Passersby aren’t likely to miss this unusual ad for Formula Toothcare. It would certainly take some extremely strong teeth to pull off this feat.

Heineken Hand

(image via: Creative Criminals)

What would be an extremely simple and perhaps boring billboard otherwise is transformed into something memorable by the addition of a three-dimensional hand reaching from behind in an attempt to grab the bottle of Heineken.

Nike Transparent Billboards

(image via: adland)

Is it a frame that you can walk through? A painting? A transparent billboard? It’s difficult to say from the images, therefore it’s difficult to interpret what Nike was going for with this strange series of ads. Hopefully it’s the former, because the other possibilities make it seem as if the company wants their customers to slam into a wall.

Cingular Drops Calls

(image via: maxvt)

Cingular turned consumers’ biggest complaint about cellular phone service into a gigantic Times Square advertisement featuring a cutout of the word ‘calls’ on the ground below the billboard.

World’s First Edible Chocolate Billboard

(image via: yumsugar)

The world’s first edible chocolate billboard didn’t last long. Thorntons, a British chocolate company, unveiled an 860-lb, 14.5ft – 9ft billboard made with 10 chocolate bunnies, 72 giant chocolate eggs and 128 chocolate panels in London in 2007. The billboard was consumed by shoppers within three hours of going up.

Chevy Aveo Coin Billboard

(image via: trendhunter)

Another consumable billboard that was destroyed by onlookers rather quickly is this penny creation, advertising the Chevrolet Aveo. The billboard featured a car made entirely from 20,000 one-pence coins which were picked off by passersby within 30 minutes.

Sony PSP Transparent Billboards

(image via: toxel)

Adventure is anywhere, these billboards seem to say – any ordinary place could be the setting for a range of exciting activities when you’ve got a Sony PSP. Unfortunately, these were not real Sony billboards but a clever concept created by an advertising student.