Mountain View, California — Global search engine leader Google is all groomed up to transform the digital landscape of its Maps and Street View services by selling ads mapped onto real world posters, billboards and storefront to the highest bidder if Google implements a recently granted patent.
According to a newly awarded patent to Google on January 7, which is entitled: “Claiming Real Estate in Panoramic or 3D Mapping Environments for Advertising,” describes its plans to identify posters, billboards and other advertising space on its online mapping applications and give advertisers the chance to replace these images with more up-to-date adverts.
It then propose to replace those ads with real-time adverts. This indicates that the ads within Streetview would remain current at all times despite the fact that Streetview pictures remain the same.
This fake Google Street View is of Time Square where you can see billboards covered up with ads for mortgages, emoticons, and potions for removing stretch marks.
The patent describes an advertising auction process for unclaimed properties. The basic idea is pretty simple. As Google’s Street View team drives all around the world, its cameras capture tons of imagery — including billboards. Large billboards are only relevant in a given location for so long.
Since Google owns the images, why not overwrite those old and probably outdated billboards with advertisements of its own? Well, that’s just what it wants to do. That is likely to work well for Google commercially but could lead to a situation where rival companies buy up ad space near or even on property owned by a competitor.
Google is planning on using software which recognizes the posters on a theater and can replace them with new information, even if the Street View image is old. Photo: Cavendish Press
Once Google determines the “interest points” of an image, it will then morph virtual reality with a hyperlink or totally replace a previous Street View snapshot with a new one.
The patent notes: “The link can be associated with a property owner, for example the property owner which owns the physical property portrayed. The link can alternatively be associated with an advertiser who placed the highest bid on the image recognized within the region of interest (e.g., poster, billboard, banner, etc.). Any portion of the geographic display image in which the region of interest is located can be selectable (e.g., hot-linked). For example, the image of the coffee shop can be hot-linked to an advertisement for the coffee shop.”
A Google spokesman said: “We file patent applications on a variety of ideas that our employees come up with. Some of those ideas later mature into real products or services, some do not. Prospective product announcements should not necessarily be inferred from our patent applications.”
Well the concept is already well over two years old, and it is surprising that Google did not jump on it sooner. It will be interesting to watch money exchange hands and glitzy signs appear out of nowhere, assuming Google maintains its “Do No Evil” philosophy.