Googlemaps street view – the new advertising medium?
Googlemaps recently launched street view http://maps.google.co.uk/help/maps/streetview/ – which allows users to view street level footage of many areas in London as well as their existing aerial photographs. I can see how this is a very useful service for those trying to find their way around (although driving cars with cameras around London all the time does nothing for their carbon footprint).
The service has already been met with complaints over privacy – the camera footage has a numberplate filter which blurs out all vehicle plates, but already people are spotting and posting up links to people caught on camera getting dressed in their houses or undertaking illegal activities on the street that have been accidentally caught. Google argue that any images which receive complaints will be removed, which I can understand, as to police this themselves would be a massive undertaking. Google maps aerial shots have been used by people to spot things such as humorous crop circles and large graffiti before – but there hasn’t ever been the opportunity to spot personal activity on such a close up level until now.
Already one person has been caught trying to flash the cameras: http://gawker.com/5009185/girl-flashes-google-mapmakers-cameras and no doubt there will be more such teenage antics to come.
But the questions in my mind is this – How long before companies try to capitalise on this new potential medium? And will legal advertising spaces on roads and buildings which are on the regular googlemaps street view car routes go up in price due to the potential extra views via the site?
Street view isn’t updated every day, or even every month – but for general brand awareness and viral work this is a new potential way to communicate to their audience. Companies such as Find a property are already using the service well to let people look at the locations of homes advertised on it’s site on findaproperty.com and other companies are catching on – but no one seems to yet be using it by directly trying to get things filmed by the cameras. I can see a high chance that people will start trying to use this in the next few months to test it out. The question is – will Google try to block such activity? Or will they embrace it and allow companies whose adverts are visible on street view to add a hotlink to their website on the view as well? This would give them an additional revenue stream, which although not massive, is a sign of things to come – one which is much less invasive than banner ads and feels more natural to the user. We already have advertising in computer games – with Xbox 360 in talks about updatable adverts in games – and plans for advertising spots within the backgrounds of TV shows with ‘red button’ or similar technologies allowing the viewer to read more about the product on screen as a potential future replacement for advert breaks (which with the invention of VOD and TiVo are now beginning to loose viewers). Street view seems a natural compliment to this style of marketing and I will look forward to seeing how it develops.
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