“Flip book” subway ads old news in Boston but a big deal in L.A.

The Los Angeles Times has a story on subway billboards that appear as videos to the passengers gliding by them:

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On Tuesday, commercial messages on mass transit in the Southland reached a new frontier when subway riders began seeing a 15-second video floating outside the train’s window in a dark tunnel near Universal City.

The first ad was a short promo for the film "Speed Racer," featuring the main character’s car zipping and flipping about. An ad for Target began showing later in the morning, complete with dancing models.

A few people in the Times story find the billboards "intrusive." I link to it for two reasons. First, it’s not often that Boston can brag about being ahead of Los Angeles in glitzy forms of advertising; we’ve seen moving ads for Target stores, cruise lines, and (of course) luxury cars for years on the Red Line. Second, it’s charmingly naive that the Times headline describes video billboards as a "big payday" for the Los Angeles transit authority. Have they made much of a dent in the MBTA’s debt?