Mobile Impact Ads puts scrolling billboards on trucks

I'm really starting to wonder how much motion is going to be allowable on the roads, and whether or not we'll soon be awash in a sea of moving, mobile advertising. While I don't have anything against electronic billboards, for example, I do know from driving down the Las Vegas strip that putting a lot of them in close quarters makes for some very distracting driving (damned Cirque du Soleil ads!). But when you start talking about putting moving ads onto cars, trucks and buses that are themselves moving, that's another story entirely.

Sure, by this point we've all seen cars and buses wrapped in vinyl graphics advertising some department store, movie or other upcoming event. And of course trucks have had logos painted onto their sides for close to a century now. But up to this point, the graphics have been static, with the only motion coming from the vehicles themselves. But Mobile Impact Ads is starting to change that, and having seen one of their trucks on the road, I'm starting to wonder if an ad could be a little too eye-catching.

Have you ever driven down the road behind somebody with an in-car TV? While they might be a God-send for parents taking their kids on a long road trip, I have to admit that I find the little screens distracting, and my eye is frequently caught by the little flecks of movement coming from the screens. Now imagine that instead of a tiny screen, you have a 6x8' billboard. They're not constantly animated, but the images changed about once every 15 seconds by my count, and that was enough to make sure that I turned my head a little every time it happened.

I've seen a few half-hearted attempts to mount a digital screen on the side of a truck to show advertisements to passing motorists, but thankfully nobody has really taken that idea to its full potential yet. But surely somebody will try (until local law enforcement tells them to cut it out :)

Will some new advertising innovation eventually prove to be unsafe for drivers, or will we just continue to adapt and get more proficient at tuning out distractions behind the wheel?

Tags: mobile advertising, digital signage, electronic billboards