Google Hints at Smart Billboards & Digital Display Networks for Advertising in Malls, Hotels, ATMs, Shopping Centres and Outdoors

Google may start appearing on digital billboards and displays in a shopping centre near you. The company recently filed a patent application for technology that will allow local stores to connect their stock control systems to a Google-powered network of electronic displays.

The patent, filed December 21, 2006 with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, covers systems and methods for allocating advertising space in a “network of electronic display devices.”

• To check out the patent, just click here.

"Advertisers may upload advertisement messages to a server specifying information such as budget, price per impression, preferred billboards and other constraints. One or more keywords or other descriptors are specified for each advertisement message,” according to the filing.

Google's system would then generate an advertising campaign specifying where on the display devices the advertisement message will appear. “The output may consist of various forms, including video, audio, printed incentive, interactive data transfers and/or combinations of these,” the company mentioned in its filing.

If the filing is a sign of things to come from Google, kiosk billboards, ATM machines and other digital displays in shopping centres and hotel lobbies could start promoting products and services directly from a nearby retailer’s inventory and/or service offering. Presently, advertising via similar screens is limited to looped, poster-type advertisements, in Google’s vision, the ads could be pulled directly from a retailer’s stock control system.

In the filed patent application, Google explained that its technology could remove the burden of manually loading looped ads, instead enable retailers to create campaigns from available goods. The adverts can be displayed in rotation and stopped automatically once the product has sold out. Once the product is back in stock, the advertisement can be re-added to the display cycle.

Shak Gohir