I built a digital city where brands can own the advertising space

Toge — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 23:04:53 +0000

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 logo there, and turn that part of the city into a clickable destination.

Instead of putting an ad next to the experience, the ad becomes part of the experience itself.

How it works

A visitor explores the city and clicks on a location.

Each location has its own price and status.

If a company takes over that space, its branding appears directly on that part of the city.

The logo becomes clickable and can redirect people to:

a startup
a product page
a company website
a campaign
basically any destination the advertiser wants

The interesting part is that these spaces are not necessarily permanent.

Some locations can later become available again if another advertiser is willing to pay more for the same space.

So the city is designed to stay dynamic instead of becoming a static directory of logos.

Why I built it

I kept thinking about how predictable online advertising has become.

Most users have trained themselves to ignore banner-like elements almost automatically.

So I wanted to test a different idea:

Can advertising itself become something people want to explore?

Instead of:

content
ad
content
ad
content

I wanted something closer to:

the environment itself
becomes the advertising surface

Think of it like digital real estate.

A skyscraper has more visual presence than a tiny shop.

A central location feels different from a remote location.

A road, park, tower, or landmark can each have a different kind of value.

That makes the advertising inventory feel more tangible.

The product

Swishtown currently includes:

an explorable digital city
multiple city visual modes
clickable properties
brand placements
purchase flows
payment handling
analytics
session tracking
uptime monitoring
performance monitoring

I also built the launch infrastructure around it so I can understand how people actually use the city after they arrive.

What I am testing now

The biggest question is not really technical.

It is this:

Will people actually care about advertising space more if it feels like a world instead of a banner?

That is what I am trying to validate now.

The first version is live:

swishplay.in

I would especially love feedback from developers, founders, marketers, and product people.

What would make a digital city like this more interesting to explore?

DEV Community: Toge

I built a digital city where brands can own the advertising space