{
  "id": 8126061,
  "title": "I built a digital city where brands can own the advertising space",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/17/i-built-a-digital-city-where-brands-can-own-the-advertising-space",
  "topic": "tech",
  "section": "Tech",
  "published": "2026-09-17T23:04:53.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Dev.to",
    "slug": "dev-to",
    "url": "https://dev.to/inmukibuilds2/i-built-a-digital-city-where-brands-can-own-the-advertising-space-3dm3"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Online advertising has remained largely unchanged, featuring banners, sponsored cards, and promoted posts. Designer Greg wanted to innovate and create Swishtown, a digital city where advertising spaces can become tangible real estate. Buildings, shops, roads, parks, and locations within this city can be transformed into advertising real estate. A brand can claim ownership of a location, adorn it with its logo, and turn the area into an interactive destination. This approach merges advertising with the overall experience, rather than placing it alongside. Each location within Swishtown has its own price and status, making it possible for companies to purchase and display their branding on that specific part of the city. The logo becomes clickable, redirecting users to various destinations, such as startups, products, websites, or campaigns. However, these advertising spaces are not fixed. Some areas can become available again if another advertiser is willing to pay a higher price for the same location. Thus, the city maintains a dynamic and ever-changing environment, rather than becoming a static directory of logos.\n\nGreg's motivation for creating Swishtown stemmed from his observation of the predictability and user indifference towards online advertising. He aimed to test whether advertising itself could become an engaging and immersive experience rather than a mere interruption. This concept can be likened to the idea of using digital real estate. Larger structures, such as skyscrapers, offer a more prominent visual presence compared to smaller shops. Similarly, central locations in Swishtown hold greater value than remote ones. Each type of location, whether a road, park, tower, or landmark, can provide different values, making the advertising inventory more tangible and appealing.\n\nSwishtown currently consists of an explorable digital city, multiple visual modes, clickable properties, brand placements, purchase flows, payment handling, analytics, session tracking, uptime monitoring, and performance monitoring. Greg also developed the infrastructure required for launching the product, enabling him to gain insights into how users interact with the city once they arrive. Currently, the product is live at swishplay.in, and Greg is actively seeking feedback from developers, founders, marketers, and product people.\n\nThe primary question that Greg seeks to answer is whether people will find advertising space more valuable if it feels like a world rather than a banner. By testing this concept, he aims to validate if the idea of advertising as a dynamic, immersive environment can capture users' attention and engagement.",
  "summary": "Most internet advertising still looks the same. Banners. Sponsored cards. Promoted posts. Rectangles everywhere. I wanted to try something different: What if advertising was a place instead of a box? So I built Swishtown. Swishtown is a fictional digital city where buildings, shops, roads, parks, and other locations can become advertising real estate. A brand can take over a location, place its…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}