In our current poor economic times when the government and businesses are having trouble balancing their budgets, we’re seeing them come up with some creative ways to derive additional revenue.

It seems like whenever cities need to balance their budgets, one of the first areas to cut is education. School districts have resorted to selling advertising on school websites. I’m all for it as long as the ads are clean and don’t offend any parents.

The only problem I see with this approach is that school websites don’t have enough traffic to generate a significant amount of revenue. That is, unless school districts start to promote them heavily. Still, every school district in each city would need to come together as one entity in order to accumulate get enough eyeballs for advertisers to be interested. I think they might even have to consider coupling web advertising with advertising in the school buildings themselves, which leads to us to what Miami is thinking about doing.

Miami is considering putting ads on lamp posts, fire hydrants, public buildings, and parking meters. Again, if it helps money-strapped cities generate additional revenue, sure. This is probably more appealing to advertisers than school websites because these structures are all over the city, so enough people will see them. People are already putting their own advertising like garage sales on these things anyway, so the city might as well make some money off of it from businesses.

Now let’s go from local governments to the NBA, which is contemplating sponsorships on players’ jerseys. This is not new. The WNBA have already tried it a few years ago. I’m guessing it has generated enough revenue for the NBA to consider copying it. NBA Players are already endorsing the shoes they wear anyway, they might as well make money from their jerseys too.

The only problem with all of this is when does it become too much. If the NBA starts selling ads on their jerseys, then players will literally become walking billboards. If cities and schools adopt their advertising plans, then we will be bombarded with advertising everywhere we go. I could see all three doing a mix-and-match strategy too.

What’s next? Will the city start selling ad space on sidewalks, streets, and trees? Will we see ads on police cars and uniforms? Will the government start putting Google Adsense on their sites? Will schools start selling sponsorships on school uniforms?

It all depends on the economy. If it picks up, then we probably won’t see beer ads on traffic officers’ uniforms.