I thought this was a no-brainer, but apparantly it's sufficiently innovative to warrant a patent: allow advertisers to put ads on maps. And what would have been even better: categorize the advertisments and show the only ones relevant to what the user is looking for. Add a context layer (e.g. restaurants, banks, gas stations) and you'd have an excellent navigator for on-the-road with advertisments that users want to see: those who pay more get bigger signs and are visible from farther away, or some algorithm like that. It could be a win-win for everyone.
/via +Bill Slawski
Monday Morning SEO: Ads on Google Maps?
Maps are not my friend. Or at least they haven’t been in the past, whether lost on the side of a road with a big unfolded paper map that I can’t find myself upon, or driving directions from Google or …
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You're welcome. It looks like the features described in the patent filing that would allow for the embedding of ads within the map itself, and being able to bid on different zoom levels aren't part of what Google offers in their Adsense for Maps yet. Maybe we'll see them in the future.
+Bill Slawski thanks for the video clip!
Thanks +Hamilton Carter I wonder how long that's been up there. I see a "Last updated August 29, 2012." on the pages. Hadn't heard about this option before, though.
Did see this video which shows Adsense for Maps, but it doesn't actually embed the advertisement within the map itself at the location of the advertiser:
Google Adsense For Google Maps: Monetize Your Google Maps Apps With Adsense
+Bill Slawski I couldn't find the video, but I did find the following documentation which may be what this post was talking about in the first place:
https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/advertising
Thanks, +Hamilton Carter Would definitely be interesting if it discussed the possibility of presenting advertisements on maps through the API.
+Bill Slawski I saw a Google maps I/O session on video that discussed the API. I'll try to find it.
Thanks. +Hamilton Carter. I hadn't seen any on API implementations, but I haven't been looking. Google seems to have tried out ads directly on Google maps this past November, and received some criticism for it:
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2127362/New-Google-Map-Ads-Stir-Controversy
I thought these ads had been around for awhile. I saw billboards on Google Earth a few months ago.
There seems to be an additional element to this that might make it seem a little less obvious. The advertisements would be shown on publishers pages that use the Google Maps API to display maps, somewhat akin to how Google enables publishers to display Adsense on their pages. This might lead to an advertising sponsored version of the use of the Maps API, and/or a situation where Maps API users also earn money for displaying ads.
Another non-obvious element to the patent filing is that bids might be placed on different zoom levels being displayed for the ads as well.
Google's announcement that they would be charging for the use of the Maps API when traffic reached a certain amount did lead to a number of people defecting from the service and using other APIs instead. I couldn't help but think of that when I read the patent filing.
The patent filing also seems to have been fast tracked, with it being filed this June, and published only a few short months later.