Google is about to bombard users with more and bigger mobile ads
Google's advertisers may soon figure much more prominently into the terrain of the company's maps feature.
A new type of ad offering will let companies buy the ability to place a small logo image over their physical locations on Google Maps, the search giant announced on Tuesday. Such ads are already available in Google-owned navigation app Waze.
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Other new ads within Google Maps will allow retailers to peddle in-store discounts on specific products or display an inventory search of a nearby store when users search relevant terms within Maps. If someone were to do a search for "phone charger," for instance, a Best Buy ad may appear in the sidebar with a related coupon and an inventory search bar.
Google is a giant in the mobile ad space. The company accounted for a little more than one-third of global mobile ad spending in 2015 worth around $10 billion, according to eMarketer. That's about double as much as its closest competitor, Facebook.
Google has found that more than one-third of searches made on mobile devices are related to the searcher's physical location. With more than half of the company's trillions of yearly searches now coming from mobile, Google spotted a lucrative opportunity.
"What we do see is this trend in which people are interacting with their mobile devices in this physical world at an increasing rate," said Jerry Dischler, vice president of product management at Google's AdWords program, at a press preview of the new ads.
The ads are still in the experimental phase and, like it does with all new ads, the company is taking pains to limit the number it accepts to avoid overwhelming users.
The ads won't figure into the spoken navigation directions on the app -- at least not yet. Dischler said he wouldn't rule out such an audio ad placement in the future, however.
Aside from the Maps ads, Google is also making its mobile search ads -- those that appear above search results for relevant topics -- bigger with two lines for headlines instead of one and more space in the body for advertising copy.
A new type of native format will allow for ads that better blend in with the millions of publishers and apps that use Google's ad platform.
The new offerings are part of Google's ongoing adjustment to the fact that the number of people who use the site on mobile devices rather than desktop computers is growing fast. The company is finding that much of this usage is more related to where a person is and what they are doing at the time than it is on desktop.
"We think there are these special activities when people want to get something done or they're looking for something," Dischler said. "These are the actual moments where we can tell from the data that ads can have a huge influence."
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Topics Google Advertising
Patrick Kulp is a Business Reporter at Mashable. Patrick covers digital advertising, online retail and the future of work. A graduate of UC Santa Barbara with a degree in political science and economics, he previously worked at the Pacific Coast Business Times.
