So, you spend all this money to put up a nice billboard of your station’s talent on Main Street and suddenly Google Street View comes along and digitally replaces it. That’s a real possible next step with Google Maps. According to Mashable, Google has been granted a patent that would let it put virtual billboards up where real-life billboards exist. How? Suppose you’re looking at a place in Google Maps Street View. Next to a restaurant is a billboard for Fred’s Plumbing. Google Maps recognizes the billboard is there, and replaces it with a virtual billboard for its own advertiser. Freaky, right?
Even wilder – since Google Maps knows who and where you are (it can run on many mobile phones), it could customize the ad according to your tastes (just as Google AdSense does now). Such will be the kinds of innovations we see in local advertising, as augmented reality comes alive.
