"Gas prices can change several cents overnight. Hotel room rates change much less frequently. So why are gas station prices still posted manually, but many hotels show digital prices? Discuss." Louis Gray.

I'm not sure if the sign in the image above is updated manually or automatically. If it's not automatic, it should be is Louis's point and I agree. The solution? Build an online service around updating gas prices by location and have gas stations subscribe to their corresponding RSS feed. Show this data on a more sophisticated digital display. Because the sign would already be online, we make room for advertising that automatically updates and toss that money into a national subsidy to drive the cost per barrel down.

I don't need to tell you gas stations around the country are visited by hundreds of millions of people everyday. We can easily track the number of people (page views) at each gas station around the country and target demographics to reach the general population. This is all a rough etch, so you either disagree with me prematurely and think this would never work or know well enough to think big and want to continue the discussion about one of the most underused advertising locations in the world.

Relevant News

Why gas costs more, more, more

$5 gas? To some, it's not impossible

Gas taxes set to rise in some states

UPDATE: Not restricted to the U.S. - should have made that distinction, sorry.

P.S. I don't own a car, so none of this is me bitching about my wallet. It's my response to a problem.