As I drove down the highway recently, my attention drfted briefly to the billboards - well the good ones. As dull billboards flashed past, a thought entered my head, what if a social network acquired a digital billboard company. They could then sell dynamic ad space connected to regional content ads - or they could show public user feeds.

If they sold billboard ads in conjunction with online ads it would create some interesting and enticing opportunities. Since digital billboards are rapidly replacing traditional printed ones it would be fairly easy to implement the coordinated campaigns.

How to coordinate relatively short-lived online ads in a social news feed with billboards might be a challenge. But just like prime placement of ads it the billboard space and duration and time could be auctioned to the highest bidder.

Google experimented with newspaper advertising a while back... but it didn’t correlate well with their strengths. But the marriage of billboards and social networks seems to me like a good fit. It would certainly make for a more interesting drive. And with future technology and location-based awareness - billboards could someday follow you along your drive in your self-driving vehicle - just like online ads sometimes follow you around online.