Dave Winer, incidentally the inventor of blogging and outlining, and a commentator whose amusing rants I've been following for as long (ten years) as he's been blogging, has a satnav thought . What if commercial vendors get together with the carmakers (or one might say, the GPS device manufacturers or digital mapping providers) to introduce the mapping equivalent of sponsored search results in a suggested route?
"There's no way the GPS knew there was a convenience store there (a national brand, btw), but in five or ten years, I'm sure they will. And further, Toyota will make a deal with the chain to direct traffic by their store, as opposed to their competition. Remember in a lot of businesses it's all about location. What if someday everyone has GPS, like everyone has automatic transmission now (they didn't used to, believe it or not). That could be much more valuable than advertising. It's not about impressions, it's about delivering customers. Literally!"
What is interesting is his insight that a satnav device is essentially a search engine for the real world. The implication is that all kinds of business models that have been developed for internet search engines could work equally well for satnav devices. I'm not sure that sponsored search is an example I'm particularly looking forward to.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment