Google's New Patent Application - Digital Billboards

Always looking for a new potential marketing forum, Google is thinking outside of the box again. It recently filed a patent application for digital billboards.

This past December, Google really showed how far it is envisioning the digital advertising world going. It filed a patent application with the US Patent and Trademark Office seeking to create an entirely new marketing forum. The patent is for technology and a business model for placing digital advertising on billboards and kiosks. The apparent idea is you would be able to buy advertising space through Google Adwords or a new Google service and blast your advertisement out to malls and other retail locations.

The patent process is a long one, so nobody knows if Google will be successful with its application. The very nature of the application, however, should give one pause. If Google is successful, it will give online advertisers an entirely new platform to consider. Ah, but there is a more important thing to consider.

Let’s assume Google is successful and obtains the patent. It would be a monstrous victory with all kinds of implications. Google would essentially control the advertising on kiosks and retail outlets across the United States. In bottom line terms, it would be a huge revenue producer. How many advertisers would pay to be blasted all over a mall during Christmas? The malls are so packed, people can barely move.

A secondary factor to consider is the direction Google is going. Brick and mortar marketing has often been a separate genre when compared to online marketing. Everyone and their brother have forecasted a future where these two platforms merge. Google’s proposed patent, however, seems to be the first legitimate global step in this approach.

At the end of the day, the question of whether Google succeeds with this patent is almost irrelevant. What is clear is the company is far and above any other online company in thinking of ways to expand its reach. Would anyone really expect Yahoo or MSN to come up with this idea and follow it through? Not likely. With such an out of the box way of thinking, Google stands to dominate online marketing now and long into the future.

Halstatt Pires is with MarketingTitan.com - an internet marketing firm

Back to  answering service or Telephone Proprietary
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

click for top