As part of a $20 million entrepreneurial investment, Tom Langeland, Chief Executive Officer of Alaris Media Network of Sacramento, California, has erected ten freeway billboards in the western U.S. that can display video and text and can be preprogrammed with a variety of messages and images. Additionally, Mr. Langeland claims that the billboards possess technology that is designed to identify the radio frequencies of drivers passing by the billboards.

Langeland claims to be able to deduce certain listener demographic information from the radio stations of the drivers, and then display "customized" advertising on the billboards based on their income, race, sex and buying habits of that group of passing motorists. For example, if a large number of the rush-hour drivers passing by are tuned to a radio station that typically is listened to by more affluent and/or educated listeners, then the billboard advertisements during that time would be aimed at the general types of interests of those listeners. Langeland reportedly will begin rotating the content on the enabled billboards within the next three weeks, perhaps as often as hourly, based on radio-listening patterns and information that is generally deduced.

MobilTrak of Chandler, Arizona, a partner of Alaris Media Network, created the technology that can pick up radio-listening patterns and match them with group demography. It reportedly works by detecting leakage of radiation from a radio antenna emitted when the antenna is tuned to a particular radio station. The sensors are positioned on the enabled billboard poles and reportedly can capture between 60-85% of the radio signals of passing vehicles. Critics argue that the radio frequency signals of such a large number of drivers passing a particular billboard at a high rate of speed cannot accurately be detected and that the data deduced from the detection is thus not very reliable. According to Mr. Langeland, "There are different people on the roads on a Sunday than on a Monday or Tuesday. We'll analyze our data by hour and day by day." Currently, Alaris has billboards in various locations: four in Los Angeles, two in San Francisco, two in Sacramento, one in Mantica, California and one in Louisville, Texas. Four more are planned for the San Jose, California vicinity in the near future.