Google Maps will show ads soon!

Millions of people use Google Maps every day to get to work, eat out or explore uncharted territory. It was surprising that 14 years after its launch, the app still lacks any ads knowing that Google is the leading player in this industry on the Internet. Things will change soon.

Google will turn Maps into a giant slot machine

Philipp Schindler, head of Business at Google, recently told analysts during a conference: advertising will no longer be undiscovered territory on Google Maps. According to Brian Nowak, an analyst quoted by Bloomberg magazine, Google has chosen several axes around which the monetization of the Maps app will revolve.

If you’re looking to show banner ads like you see in some Android apps, that’s not what the company plans to do. It’s more a matter of using a model similar to Google Adwords, which became Google Ads in 2018. It is this ad network that allows advertisers to place sponsored links above the search results on the Google engine.

Google Maps: sponsored recommendations in search results

The app also has its own search engine and is all about displaying sponsored recommendations of places you are looking for (hotels, restaurants, bars, etc.). Actually, Google Maps already has a recommendation system but advertisers will soon be able to pay to appear at the top of the charts.

“We want to highlight the things around you and make them stand out in a way that doesn’t interrupt your experience.“, says Rajas Moonka, Head of Product Management for Google Maps. Because user searches are often commercial in nature, ads can help with the experience, he said.

This isn’t the first time Google has investigated the possibility of showing ads on Maps. Testing has already been done in the past, but the ads were never distributed on a large scale, even if some malware did it fraudulently. That will soon change as Google focuses on the navigation app, which is seen as the next big catalyst for its growth, according to the Bloomberg report.