Do billboards on highways signal the first death throes of capitalism? | Adrian Chiles

I Spot them in the distance, just as the M4 prepares to exit west London. They can now be found everywhere in cities along congested arterial roads. They shine so brightly that you can probably see them from space. Up close, they hurt my eyes. But before I get that close, I start reading what's being advertised on those giant electronic billboards that line the street. I can't help it; There's not much else to see.

I'm assuming that's why they're there. Whatever they announce – a West End show, a shop, a watch, a holiday, a radio program – despite myself, a vague interest stirs in me. Who is that? What is that? What exactly does it say? It caught me in a weak moment. I'm tired after a long journey, after not seeing anything so bright and colorful for hundreds of kilometers. I'm grateful that my journey is about to end, so I'm perhaps more impressionable than usual. Easy meat for advertisers. Somehow I start to fall for the ad before I get close enough to see the exact details of what it is. They're smart, these people; They know what they're doing. Except maybe they don't, because before I read it properly it disappears. It's moved on to another show, another store, another watch, another holiday, something like that. What's that supposed to mean? It's as crazy as a TV commercial – remember that? – is cut off halfway.

These light walls must cost a fortune to make and maintain, and I'm assuming it's commensurately expensive to have your product up there, glowing silently as the street whizzes by. You can imagine the picture: Flash your product onto the retinas of millions of eyeballs every day. But I travel a lot on this particular stretch of road and have seen hundreds or even thousands of these advertisements and hardly ever actually saw any of them. If one, as it comes into view, appears to be of more than passing interest, I have been known to move a little faster to catch it before it is snatched away from me. In extreme cases, I'll also drive slower so I can look at it again next time. Has anyone looked into the security implications of these things?

I have many more questions – frustratingly, I can never work on answering them because under these circumstances I can hardly stop, get out my clipboard and start collecting data. I'm curious to see whether the length of time the ads stay there varies. My estimate is that they move every 15 seconds. If the technology was so damn clever, you would have thought it would take traffic conditions into account. If it's flowing, let the ads run longer. Once everything is secured, be sure to speed up your slideshow to your heart's content as drivers will then have time to record it. As far as I can tell, this is not happening. I also haven't seen any evidence that some ads stay active longer than others. If I were to sell the space, I would ask the most well-funded advertisers to pay me twice as much money in exchange for the extra time up there.

Or perhaps I'm missing the point and it's intentional to deny us the opportunity to read the ad properly. The idea is to excite our erogenous acquisition zones but deny ourselves the relief of consummation if we read the wretched things correctly. Awful. A sadder explanation might be that this represents the first death throes of capitalism, as advertisers have struggled hard to cope with our ever-shortening attention spans and now have to keep them so short that we can no longer tolerate them outside the torment of our subconscious. Might not be a bad thing.