14 DAY TRIAL // Google Maps is a great place for finding local businesses or places of interest but users may soon get more than what they bargained for as the company may start adding ads inside the maps themselves. It is currently experimenting with several formats and one idea that may find its way to users in the US and Australia soon is to have the logos of paying, established brands show up indicating their location on the map.
Several reports indicate that Google may be close to launching an experimental program as early as next week. For anyone following the company this shouldn't be too much of a surprise as Google has a big number of small experiments for most of its products all the time and is probably running several right now. The program will debut in the US and Australia and already seems to be live in Japan according to Read Write Web.
"We are continually looking at ways of displaying more and more useful geographic info on Google Maps. One area in which we are looking to experiment is showing some easily recognisable brands and logos on the map to help people more easily find what they are looking for, but this is still in experimental form and we don't have any further details to share right now," a Google spokeswoman told the Sydney Morning Herald.
Google has several ways of monetizing Maps but this latest one could be one of the most profitable and possibly the most useful to the actual users. Depending on how it will be implemented, the logos may not be too intrusive and should work in pretty much the same way as text ads do in search results. However, it's unclear whether the ads will be context related, like the text ads, or will show up no matter what the user is looking for. While Google could go the second route, if the program becomes too popular the maps, especially in more crowded cities, might become clogged with brand logos.