Google Awarded Location Based Ad Patent
W
hen you read headlines like this it sometimes feels like the rich just keep getting richer. That is until you learn that it was a trek that started six years ago and it’s serendipitous timing is a bonus. One would think that Google is rubbing their hands together and giving their best “Boo ha ha ha ha!” mad scientist laughs in Mountain View because it seems like there is just a little interest these days in targeting ads by location and the money that it could represent.
While the blogosphere was buzzing over the patent Facebook won for its news feed last week, Google earned a killer one too. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office awarded the search giant a patent for using location in an advertising system last Tuesday, which is the emerging business model for most consumer-facing location startups today.
Filed six years ago, the patent is fairly broad. It covers using location for targeting, setting a minimum price bid for an ad, offering performance analytics, and modifying the content of an ad.
This is the kind of news that on the surface looks like it could bring up more of that dirty anti-trust-monopoly talk but it’s far too early to see just how this patent will play out in the market. How Google wields this power is certainly something that remains to be seen but the folks at Digital Beat take a look at what might be brewing.
However, the location-based ad patent may give Google a nice big stick as it goes head-to-head with Apple in the world of mobile advertising. Both companies have acquired or agreed to acquire a mobile ad network in the last three months; Google agreed to buy Admob for $750 million in November, while Apple bought Quattro Wireless in January. Google actually bucked a patent Apple owns last month, when it added multi-touch functionality to its Android operating system. Perhaps this is the card the search giant had up its sleeve.
So as with anything else these days it seems like the battle lines are being drawn in every area of the online space. “Google v. Apple” and “Google v. the Rest of the World and Its Regulatory Bodies” is going to be a common theme for the foreseeable future. I suspect that Google is armed and ready but so is everyone else. It’s starting to feel like the WWE in the Internet space. Maybe there will be a pay-per-view event with Eric Schmidt and Steve Jobs in a steel cage death match. I’d pay for that.
If you are into these kinds of things here is the abstract for the patent
The usefulness, and consequently the performance, of advertisements are improved by allowing businesses to better target their ads to a responsive audience. Location information is determined (or simply accepted) and used. For example, location information may be used in a relevancy determination of an ad. As another example, location information may be used in an attribute (e.g., position) arbitration. Such location information may be associated with price information, such as a maximum price bid. Such location information may be associated with ad performance information. Ad performance information may be tracked on the basis of location information. The content of an ad creative, and/or of a landing page may be selected and/or modified using location information. Finally, tools, such as user interfaces, may be provided to allow a business to enter and/or modify location information, such as location information used for targeting and location-dependent price information. The location information used to target and/or score ads may be, include, or define an area. The area may be defined by at least one geographic reference point (e.g., defined by latitude and longitude coordinates) and perhaps additional information. Thus, 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, for example.
So here we go. Patents and lawsuits and egos…..oh my.
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YaToo: Y! Going Real Time
Apparently Twitter is all search-dealt out. After deals to bring real-time info to Bing (now) and Google (later), Twitter was not the last of the big three’s choice for real-time search. (But does it matter if Yahoo’s deal with Bing goes through?)
Instead, Yahoo, almost a week behind the others, plans to go real time with OneRiot, according to TechCrunch’s sources.
I know what you’re thinking. Who? Good question. OneRiot tracks trends on the real-time web. You can search several social sites’ updates from OneRiot, or you can use their toolbar to add real-time content to any web search. A search on one of their listed trending topics brought up seven news articles, all of which were listed as first shared on Twitter. They have the ten most recent stories on their main page—and when I checked, 90% were from Twitter. Hooray for catching that other 10%, Yahoo.
Danny Sullivan (or someone purporting to be him) commented on the TechCrunch article, calling the possible deal “lame.” He points out that Twitter APIs (and several other real-time startups) are free, and Yahoo should have gotten in on that action while it could.
What do you think? Will Yahoo deal with OneRiot, or will they jump on the Twitter bandwagon with free APIs?
AOL Still Lurking About and Hiring Big Names
AOL has made some waves this year that have mostly centered on the people that are coming on board rather than services that will turn the companies fortunes to the plus side. Tim Armstrong has come over from Google and injected a sense of purpose and urgency (one would guess) as the unit of Time Warner speeds towards its spin off which occur later this year.
As further evidence that Armstrong is trying to get the right people on the bus he has hired Brad Garlinghouse to head up the Internet and Mobile Communications operations of AOL’s business. According to Om Malik of GigaOm, Garlinghouse will have some pretty serious responsibilities especially when one considers that this is the once might AOL being talked about here.
Brad Garlinghouse, formerly a senior vice president at Yahoo, is joining AOL as its president of Internet and Mobile Communications, which includes AOL’s e-mail and instant messaging. He will be heading up AOL’s Silicon Valley operations in Mountain View and will be responsible for AOL Ventures in California.
It doesn’t take much to connect the dots regarding Garlinghouse’s responsibilities to see that acquisition will be part of this plan to move AOL back into the realm of relevance. Garlinghouse certainly has the pedigree including his now famous “Peanut Butter Manifesto” that hit the Wall Street Journal back in 2006 which revealed some of the ills that still impact Yahoo’s business today.
Garlinghouse pointed out that with the growing popularity of services such as Twitter and Facebook, the entire communications arena is ripe for disruption. AOL has an opportunity to capitalize on that disruption. The company is going to either partner with or acquire startups in order to make over its communications business and capitalize on this disruption, he said.
Garlinghouse’s past also includes working at Internet telephony start-up DialPad which eventually produced the founders of Grand Central. Grand Central is now more well known as Google Voice.
So the Internet space keeps looking more and more like the sports world in my opinion. There are some teams / companies that can afford to sign the high dollar, high profile players / employees. It makes for interesting reading and a lot of press recognition but the results will have to speak for the success or failure of the venture. All one needs to do is look at how many times a sports team has spent a fortune to have the names on the roster but produce more frustration than wins (note of transparency here: I am a New York Mets fan so I know what I am talking about here).
Hopefully, AOL does bounce back and create a more competitive environment to keep the other big guys in the Internet space on their toes. If it doesn’t then the investors will decide whether AOL has an extended time to live or just more time to make headlines.
Facebook’s New Incubator fbFund REV Announces Winners
You have to give Facebook credit. They get in the news more a lot. Maybe it’s investment. Maybe it’s a look at their numbers. Maybe it’s someone on the executive team has a hang nail. You name it they are there.
That’s why this news seemed more interesting than just the usual talk. TechCrunch reports that Facebook has announced the 20 winners of a competition to be included in a program to help them develop their platforms with a combination of money and other benefits.
Twenty companies, which include two nonprofits, will take part in a program headed by Founders Fund’s Dave McClure, and will have the chance to work with Facebook engineers and a range of Silicon Valley veterans. Facebook intends to keep us posted on the startups’ progress throughout the session, and will be holding a demo day at the end of the summer to help expose the companies to investors and press.
The list of companies are focused primarily in companies that are either social networking platforms like MyChurch.org or RunThere which is a social platform for runners and cyclists or other applications and services that facilitate online social interaction. McClure is interested in helping these folks get to business with this program.
it will emphasize getting the companies to release and iterate their products quickly, rather than spending a long time on the development cycle.
While there are two non-profits on the roster the fund is not operating as such. In other words they aren’t doing this for free. McClure says
The average amount of investment is $25,000, with over $500,000 being distributed in total (the non-profits are excluded from receiving funding, but are invited to the program for free). Investments are being made as a convertible note, with a discount for future priced rounds. fbFund is taking roughly a 1-5% stake in each company (around 2% for most of them), which is in line with what other incubators have been doing.
No word on any other Incubalooza events in the future but it might be a good time for aspiring social networking companies to set up camp in Facebook town. As we have noted recently, they do have the money.
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