Google to sell our billboards in Google Maps Street View?
Saturday, January 30th, 2010
Yes, it’s official – OTW just bolted on the biggest advertising sales organisation in history, the great Google itself.
We posted on this blog last year reminding the outdoor advertising industry that Google is not actually a search company – 98% of their revenue ($21b in 2008 and growing at 30% a year) actually comes from the advertising game. Now, logically enough, they’re moving into billboards.
We told you outdoor was cool 2.0!
But wait, not billboards in the REAL world, billboards in Google Maps. In street view. Like this:
And wait, they’re not going to sell them on our behalf – they’re selling them for their own profits!
After filing a patent application titled “Claiming Real Estate in Panoramic or 3D Mapping Environments for Advertising“, Google’s new plan was reported by various technology and advertising media in January – and we quote from GoRumours who picked it up within 24 hours:
“Quite a few of us would have used the Google Real Estate portal while buying or selling real estate properties. These listings, which are either got through web-crawling or when real estate agents submit their listings are absolutely free. The only way Google monetizes the properties is through text-based advertisements on the sidebar and at the bottom of the map-based listings.
Now, it appears that the company is working on technology that will bring advertisements right into the map. In a recently filed patent titled “Claiming Real Estate in Panoramic or 3D Mapping Environments for Advertising”, the company (even) explains how the ad-bidding system for real estate advertising will work.”
So, here’s the fickle world of adwords price bidding coming to a new economy billboard media near you (figure 10 from the patent application):
So, I wonder which of OTW’s billboards in Google Street View will be first to be resold, and who will bid to have their message on them? Rivals for the business they are located on? What price will they sell for? I guess given the speed of the USPTO processing of patents these days, we shouldn’t worry for a few months.
Then again, why buy a billboard in Google’s second life? Clearly, pretty much everything is up for sale so we might buy that bloke jogging by our billboard in Mount Eden Road instead. Maybe he’s actually the Google Street View man? Now we think about it, what about Mount Eden? Rangitoto would probably fit our logo better … any Australians interested in a harbour bridge?
