For years, downtown Detroit has been a collection of mostly dull, old looking office buildings adorned with little art, giving it the look of a 3-D black and white photo.
More recently, we've seen a little splash of color with the collection of murals and art pieces at the Z Parking Garage that opened in 2014, and the Shepard Fairey mural on the exterior of the Compuware Building that was completed in May. There's also a few other colorful displays of art like the murals/graffiti in Capitol Park.
Still, there's plenty of blank, dull, earth-tone colored office buildings.
So, I think it's fair to say that the gradual increase in the number of Times-Square size ad on buildings has spiced up the downtown visual. There's a mix of national ads like T-Mobile (two of them), iPhone (two) and Pepsi, and local ones such as the Pistons (two), Shinola and MGM.
The MGM Casino ad with a giant Lion occupies a spot that has long displayed advertisements downtown on the Cadillac Tower building. From 1994-2000, there was a 14-story high Nike ad with a mural of Lions running back Barry Sanders. Sanders was replaced by Red Wings star Steve Yzerman.
Here's a look at some of those ads.