HOUSTON -- Texas A&M’s conservative estimate that people see about 850 advertisements every day.

“We’re bombarded,” Margaret Lloyd with Scenic Texas said.

Lloyd tried to stop TxDOT from allowing even more ads, but it didn’t work.

“Decisions are being made in our state for ugliness rather than for beauty,” said Lloyd.

Welcome to the new, digital world. There are already a few examples in Houston of the electronic billboards TxDOT has decided to permit.

“It’s the next phase in outdoor advertising,” Lee Vela with the Outdoor Advertising Association of Texas said.

You’ll never see moving video along highways. Federal law bans that. Instead, TxDOT has just given cities the right to decide whether to allow highway signs with an electronic message that can change every eight seconds.

“It’s certainly a high-tech look for a city and it brings 21st century technology to a city,” Vela said.

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But not everyone agrees.

“Futuristic doesn’t mean good,” Lloyd said.

Lloyd now plans to urge individual cities to block the new signs. Right now, they’re only legal if they advertise the business that owns the property. There’s already one at a shopping center in the Galleria.

TxDOT’s rule change would let any billboard go digital as long as a city approves it. And that familiar sign you drive by every day, could switch seven times a minute.

“10,800 times in one day, I don’t think that’s good for the traveling public,” Lloyd said.

Vela says the ads will put a nice touch in the city.

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Many people think that commercial art and commercial messages are just as beautiful,” Vela said.

City officials in Houston are hesitant to embrace the idea of digital billboards. Houston is still pushing to bring hundreds of existing billboards down over the next few years.

The advertising industry points out digital billboards would be required to show emergency evacuation messages and amber alerts. They hope that will convince some local cities to give them the green light.