I glimpse them in the distance just as the M4 readies itself to peter out into west London. They are now to be found along furred-up arterial roads in cities everywhere. They shine so brightly that you can probably see them from space. Up close, they make my eyeballs hurt. But before I get that near, I start reading whatever is being advertised on these enormous electronic billboards flanking the road. I can’t help it; there’s not a lot else to look at.
I assume this is why they are there. Whatever they are trumpeting – a West End show, a shop, a watch, a holiday, a radio show – despite myself, some vague interest in me stirs. Who is that? What is that? What exactly does it say? It’s got me at a weak moment. I’m tired after a long journey, having seen nothing so bright and colourful for perhaps hundreds of miles. I’m grateful to be close to my journey’s end and I am therefore perhaps more suggestible than usual. Easy meat for the advertisers. In some small way, I’m starting to fall for the ad even before I’m close enough to see the exact details of what it is. They are clever these people; they know what they are doing. Except perhaps they don’t, because before I’ve read it properly it vanishes. It has moved on to another show, shop, watch, holiday or something. What’s that all about? It’s as mad as a TV ad – remember them? – being cut off halfway through.
These walls of light must cost a fortune to make and maintain, and I assume it is correspondingly expensive to have your product up there, blazing out silently as the road roars past. You can imagine the pitch: have your product flashed on to the retinas of millions of eyeballs every day. But I’m on this particular section of road a lot and have seen hundreds or even thousands of these ads, and hardly ever had a good look at any of them. If one, as it hoves into view, looks like it might be of more than passing interest, I have been known to speed up a bit to catch it before it’s snatched away. Or, in extreme cases, I might slow right up to get another look at it on its next go round. Has anyone looked at the safety implications of these things?
I have many more questions – which, frustratingly, I can never work on getting answered because under the circumstances I can hardly stop, get my clipboard out, and start collecting data. I’m intrigued as to whether the amount of time the adverts are up there varies. By my reckoning, they move on every 15 seconds. If the tech was that darned clever, you would have thought it would take traffic conditions into account. If it is flowing, then leave the ads up longer, if it is all backed up, then by all means speed up your slideshow to your heart’s content as drivers will have time to take them in. As far as I can tell, this doesn’t happen. Nor have I seen evidence that some ads stay up longer than others. If I were selling the space, I would be asking the most deep-pocketed advertisers to bung me double the money in return for extra time up there.
Or perhaps I’m missing the point and it is by design we are being denied the opportunity to read the ad properly, the idea being to arouse our acquisitive erogenous zones but deny us the relief of consummation in reading the wretched things properly. Cruel. A sadder explanation might be that this represents the first death throes of capitalism, as advertisers come hard up against our ever-shortening attention spans and now have to keep it so brief that we can’t take it in any more, outside the torments of our subconscious. Might be no bad thing.