Last Thursday, my workout partner wanted to get coffee and cigarettes before we began our workout routine so we drove all the way out to Littleneck just so he can get his caffeine and nicotine fix. Long drive, I know; he claims it saves him $3 per pack because it was cheaper at the gas station WAYYY out there. Honestly, I didn’t think it was worth the gas and time to travel so far but I had nothing better to do.

As we pulled into the gas station, I noticed something different. Something I’ve never seen before… An LCD monitor on top of the pump station. “COOL!” was my initial thought. I was expecting to catch a couple minutes of movie while I wait for my friend to buy his cigarettes but unfortunately, all I saw on display were advertisements and a short message on the side with instructions to get your products advertised on the screen. It’s absolutely brilliant!

Whoever came up with the idea to put a LCD monitor on top of the pump to serve ads is pure genius. I don’t know about everyone else but when I go to the pump to fill up, I usually have nothing better to do but to lean on my car for 3-5 minutes waiting for the tank to fill up.  This is a great time to force-feed ads to customers whether they like it or not. They’ll be forced to watch it while they wait for their gas tank to fill. Even if they don’t watch the screen, they’ll still have to listen to the audio.

I think we’ll be seeing more ad serving LCD screens popping up at gas stations everywhere. You might even be able to target specific ethnic audiences based on the demographic statistics of the surrounding neighborhood.

Tags: Advertising, Technology

This entry was posted on Monday, August 3rd, 2009 at 3:27 pm and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.