With the advent of vehicular communications and new developments in enhanced reality for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), we present in this position paper a new highway revenue model based on digital advertising super-imposed on physical billboards.
We show that there is a strong correlation between economic development and an extensive road network.
However, the public support for maintaining and expanding the road network is diminishing since these investments mainly rely on taxation.
The common approach is to introduce tolls as a revenue generating method for supporting these investments.
We argue that virtual billboards could provide an alternative revenue stream and avoid tolls in highways with high volumes of traffic.
The key technologies are vehicular-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications and virtual windshields that already provide enhanced reality for ADAS.
The physical billboards would transmit targeted advertising to approaching vehicles that would overlay it on top of the billboard sign.
We demonstrate that it is already possible to implement this system with existing technologies.
These digital ads would combine the flexibility of Internet advertisement with the high exposure of highway billboards and the willingness to receive them as an alternative to paying tolls.
Finally, we show that it is viable to provide advertisement sponsored highway segments with very low cost-per-view values, especially in suburban highways that have a high volume of traffic.