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Take Over Billboards In Google Street View

Dawson Barber — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 04:54:08 +0000

Tuesday January 12, 2009

Wouldn't it be fun to scoop all the virtual billboards on Time Sq?

Two independent reports less than a week apart claim Google considers inserting some kind of advertising into its Street View maps.

CNET last week: “In the presentation, Google tossed out the notion that ads may one day appear in Street View. Those ads would be tied into the listings in the Google Local Business Center and the Google Favorite Places program.”

RRW today about Google’s new patent: “In this patent, Google describes how it plans to identify buildings, posters, signs and billboards in these images and give advertisers the ability to replace these images with more up-to-date ads. In addition, Google also seems to plan an advertising auction for unclaimed properties.”

(Update): One question people seem to have about this is whether there’s enough scale to make Street View billboards interesting to advertisers. Probably not so much on the PCs, but I’d say the Street View GPS navigation in Androids will make it interesting.

This is yet another twist for a subject AdLab’s been covering for years:

The classic hit: Advertising With Google Maps (2005)
Microsoft Launches Virtual Earth With Billboards (2006)
Billboards in Google Earth (2007)
Time Square in Google Earth (2008)

via Take Over Billboards In Google Street View… (Advertising Lab) » TechNews.AM.

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Place Page on Google Local Business Center Gets ‘Post Message and Badges

Dawson Barber — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 03:39:55 +0000

Google added two new features that can help you reach existing and potential customers even more effectively on your Local Business’ Place Page. Both features are available by claiming your business through Google Local Business Center.

Post to your Place Page: You can now post ‘status updates’ on Place Page directly from your Local Business Center dashboard. Once you’ve logged in and are on your business’ dashboard, post an update and it’ll go live in just few minutes.

Badge for Your Claimed Place Page will help users identify listings that’ve been updated and improved by their business owners, helping them to trust that the information about your business’s as accurate as possible. Also, you can now claim your listing directly from Place Page by following “Business owner?” link.

via Place Page on Google Local Business Center gets ‘Post message and Badges’.

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Optimized Search Suggestions Using Your Location

Dawson Barber — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 02:59:12 +0000

Thursday, January 14, 2010 2:38 PM

Typing a query into the search box on a phone can often be slow and difficult. For this reason, relevant search suggestions that match your intended query can meaningfully reduce the time and effort it takes to submit a search. Today in the US, we are happy to announce an improvement to Google.com search suggestions offered on Android powered devices and iPhone. Now, Google will offer suggestions based on the phone’s current or last location, making the suggestions more relevant.

For example, when users in the Boston metro area begin typing “Muse”, suggestions such as “museum of science boston” and “museum of fine arts boston” are provided because people near Boston frequently look for these very popular museums. On the other hand, users in San Francisco who begin their query with “Muse” will see suggestions for museums in the San Francisco area. By using the device’s current or most recent location, Google is able to offer even better, more useful suggestions than ever before. To try this yourself, go to google.com on your phone’s browser and start typing a query to see the new location-optimized suggestions. Make sure you have turned on “Save recent locations” and “Allow use of device location” under the Settings link on the google.com home page.

Update @ 4:50 PM: Note that you may have to refresh google.com in your phone browser to see the new optimized suggestions.

Posted by Natalia Marmasse and Scott Huffman, Google Mobile Engineering Team.

via Official Google Mobile Blog: Optimized Search Suggestions using your location.

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Augmented Reality [AR] – Enhancing the Usefulness of Mobile Local Search

Dawson Barber — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 17:32:16 +0000

Posted 15 January 2010 15:37pm by Tina Whitfield

Augmented Reality is used to intensify the truth, boost accuracy, supplement the concrete, and add-to the existent. It makes mobile local search better than ever before.

Let us begin with defining the term AR by defining “augment.”

Supplement
Intensify
Increase
Expand
Boost

It’s also important to define the word “real.”

Authentic
Existent
True
Concrete
Accurate
Genuine

So augmented reality is used to intensify the truth, boost accuracy, supplement the concrete, and add to the extant. It makes mobile local search better than ever before.

Mobile augmented reality for mobile local search can make a visit to Italy far more rewarding than using a cumbersome printed travel guide.

Find the nearest subway with the New York Nearest Subway app or the Tokyo Subway app. Discover San Francisco Transit or the Nearest Tube in London. Find as you go without having to visualize word instructions or convert a 2D map in your mind’s eye to some quasi, real-world image. Augmented reality increase productivity, whether for work or leisure.

What are the great phones to get the most our augmented reality? Smart phones include but are not limited to the Apple iPhone, HTC Dream, Samsung Galaxy, and Nokia N97, all with cameras, accelerometers, GPS, and internet connectivity. If you have one of these phones and have not yet downloaded an AR app, what are you waiting for?

And if you favor particular mobile search AR apps, please share your experience.

via Augmented Reality [AR] – Enhancing the Usefulness of Mobile Local Search | Blog | Econsultancy.

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See That Funny 2D Barcode In The Store Window? It Might Pull Up A Google Listing.

Dawson Barber — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 04:54:23 +0000

by Erick Schonfeld on December 6, 2009

What if every store had a bar-code sticker on its window so that you could pull out your iPhone, wave it in front of the bar code and get all sorts of information about that business—the telephone number, photos, customer reviews? Starting on Monday, you’ll be able to do that at up to 190,000 local businesses throughout the U.S.

Google has mailed out window stickers with two-dimensional bar codes (aka, QR codes) to the most-searched for or clicked-on businesses in its local business directory. Anyone with a QR code reader in their phone can scan it to call up a Google Mobile local directory page for one of these “Favorite Places,” which generally includes a map, phone number, directions, address, reviews, and a link to the store’s website. (It’s a mobile version of Google Places).

Local businesses can also set up coupon offers through their Google directory page, which would turn the QR code into a mobile coupon, and help entice someone standing outside a store to come in: “If you found us on Google, you get 20% off.”

Japan is already QR-crazy. Google wants the U.S. to be next. In conjunction with the QR code sticker roll-out, Google is also giving away 40,000 Quickmark QR Code Reader apps for the iPhone, which normally cost $1.99 apiece. But you can use any QR code reader. There are a bunch of free ones, some on Android phones as well.

There are now over a million local businesses which have claimed their Google local listing, up from a few hundred thousand last summer. If these QR code stickers become popular in the U.S., it could encourage more small businesses to claim their listings and give Google cleaner data.

In the near future, Google Maps on mobile phones will also start including businesses as points of interest. Google calls these “smart maps” internally. As the businesses are added, they are clickable, and their Places page pops up.

Google will be adding these businesses incrementally. “They are selected based on their PlaceRank,” says John Hanke, VP of Google Earth, Maps, and Local. PlaceRank is like PageRank for places It tries to figure out how prominent a place is based on factors such as “references on the Web, reviews, photos,” says Hanke, “how many people know about it, how long its been around.”

Maybe they should put the PlaceRank on the sticker. A high PlaceRank could become a badge of honor, like a high Zagat’s score.

via See That Funny 2D Barcode In The Store Window? It Might Pull Up A Google Listing..

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Local Search Predictions for 2010

Dawson Barber — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 01:46:50 +0000

Though 2009 was a tough year for some Yellow Pages directory publishers, the industry is entering 2010 with “fresh optimism,” according to Neg Norton, president of the Yellow Pages Association (YPA), who noted that small businesses are beginning to show signs of recovery and growth.

At the same time, publishers are diversifying their business models to incorporate more online offerings and more interactive capabilities. (via MarketingCharts)

In a blog post on Search Engine Land, Norton recently shared his top-four market trend predictions that will likely affect small businesses looking to harness local search. The top local search predictions for 2010:

1. Mobile will drive local search growth: Last year, BIA/Kelsey predicted that mobile local search ad revenues will grow to $130 million by 2013, and that mobile local searches will increase to 35% of all searches by 2013. Amid this growth, the Yellow Pages industry is seeing significant innovation on the mobile front, from new Yellow Pages iPhone apps to mapping technologies that deliver relevant local information to users on the go.

Norton added that in 2010, advertisers will be faced with a growing set of options, and many will have limited knowledge of how to break through. The providers that will do well will be the ones who can make sense of this quickly changing platform and deliver programs that offer quality sales leads to advertisers.

2. Local search providers will vie for social: Though no one yet “owns” social local search, all of the major players in the space have their eye on this prize. This is because, according to Nielsen, ad spending at top social media sites increased 119% over the last year, and the share of social media ad spending to total online spending doubled to 15% in 2009.

Because of the significant trust that exists within online social communities and the fact that social networks have become a crucial way in which consumers relate to one another, players in the local search industry will seek to find ways to tap into those networks to serve local business information to consumers in search of it.

3. Local print advertising will decline but won’t disappear: Though many industry watchers have been predicting the death of print media for a long time, Norton doesn’t think it will disappear anytime soon. Instead, he points to the fact that usage is changing. Media fragmentation is causing a gradual decline in the quantity of print Yellow Pages references, for example, although the quality of those references is still very high.

Norton added that the “perception of usage decline in the printed Yellow Pages far exceeds the reality of what is actually happening.” “For advertisers, this shift in usage means taking a close look at advertising spending and evaluating investment in print,” Norton said. “Those who are too quick to abandon it may see a reduction in qualified sales leads, while those who aren’t open newer platforms might be missing opportunity.”

4. A hybrid marketing approach will win: A good deal of Yellow Pages industry discussion this year has focused on the hybrid model that has been deployed in many sales teams. Yellow Pages sales representatives, for example, are now armed with portfolios of options ranging from owned products to partner products. In this way, the reps are positioned as advertising consultants to small businesses. To take advantage of such resources, advertisers need to devote some time to thinking through their options and devising a strategy that spans the appropriate media for the business.

“It’s more important than ever to consider a hybrid approach because today’s consumers get information for a multitude of places before making a purchasing decision,” Norton said, adding that this fragmentation will only continue to grow in 2010 and beyond.

via Local Search Predictions for 2010 – MarketingVOX.

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Google Voice Search Demo

Dawson Barber — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 23:02:14 +0000

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