Markets

Google's Patent Shakes Up Hyper-Local Market

By David Weir

Updated on: March 5, 2010 / 4:07 PM EST / MoneyWatch

Google's winning of a patent for its geotargeted advertising system--one basis for what makes its search engine so powerful--shows that Google anticipated the power of local long before the term hyper-local became all the rage, especially among Internet news sites.

Google applied for the patent, after all, back in September 2003, when we were still mired in the post dot-com bust malaise and few were talking about all upcoming demand for search and ads at a local level.

Though it isn't possible on the basis of this patent to declare that the company has gained a definitive strategic advantage, Google certainly seems well-positioned going forward.

To win the patent, Google's argument in support of its local-targeted ad technology went like this:

Much of what advertisers spend on advertising is wasted because they cannot sufficiently target their audience.
What is referred to as "the present invention" can help advertisers do this better by identifying such information as the "country, region, metro area, city or town, postal zip code, telephone area code, etc." of users.
The company defines location like this: "the area may be a circle defined by a geographic reference point and a radius, an ellipse defined by two geographic reference points and a distance sum, or a polygon defined by three or more geographic reference points..."

In the obtuse language of such documents, the patent is described as encompassing a computer-implemented method for controlling serving of an ad using its relevancy involving the following key steps, which are meant to differentiate Google's entry from other approaches:

accepting, by a computer system () geolocation information associated with the request;
comparing, by the computer system, the accepted geolocation information associated with the request with geolocation targeting information associated with the ad to generate a comparison result;
determining, by the computer system, the relevancy of the ad using at least the comparison result;
controlling, by the computer system, the serving of the ad, for rendering on a client device, using the determined relevancy of the ad;
determining, by the computer system, whether the ad has geolocation price information corresponding to the geolocation information accepted; and
if it is determined that the ad has geolocation price information corresponding to the geolocation information accepted, then determining, by the computer system, a score... correspond(ing) to an area defined by at least one geographic reference point.

The main point that should be made about this patent is that it demonstrates how, once again, Google was clearly looking ahead at the long-term development of its advertising business long before most of us were yet focused on the potential of geocoded ads.

All successful companies, especially in the highly competitive tech space, have to be able to do this, but Google continues to set the standard.

Related BNET Media Links:

All News is Local, and Effective, for Outside.In "Outside.In's CEO Mark Josephson could hardly contain himself when we spoke for the first time in more than a year today, as I asked about how his company's "hyperlocal content and advertising platform" has been faring..."

Twitter's "Local Trends" a Precursor to Geo-Targeted Ads for News Media "Twitter announced to relatively little fanfare last week that it has started tracking "Local Trends..."
http://industry.bnet.com/media/10006264/twitters-local-trends-a-precusor-to-geo-targeted-ads-for-

Amazon's Plan to Insert Ads into eBooks "Leading up to the big holiday weekend, Amazon quietly applied for patents to insert ads into e-Books, including old and out-of-print publications, as well as in any versions available via the emerging world of on-demand printing."