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Sell Stuff on Street View: Google Patents Virtual Billboards

by Matthew Zuras on January 12, 2010 at 02:10 PM


All your virtual billboards are belong to Google. Plans are in the works for a possible new advertising system through Google Street View, in which virtual spaces will be auctioned to the highest bidder. Software will identify points of interest in "panoramic or 3-D mapping environments" such as billboards, buildings, and banners, and put them up for auction to potential advertisers. In the least extreme example, a movie theater chain would be able to swap the old posters displayed on a particular theater with posters for new films, all within the original Street View image.

Google filed a patent for the new advertising system back in July of 2008, and it was recently granted. The software will allow for either the addition of hyperlinks or the replacement of existing images with new ones -- even for unclaimed properties. This raises inevitable questions: Will rival companies be able to replace a store's marquee with their own ad? Will you wake up to your daily Street View search and find a digital Pepsi banner swathed across your apartment window? Will Nike designers 'shop their own imprint on the Reebok T-shirts of Street View passersby? Probably not, as we give Google's legal department credit for thinking all that through, but, still, it seems that the software allows for that possibility. [From: ReadWriteWeb, via: The Huffington Post]

Tags: advertising, google, patent, street view, StreetView

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