Google Earth has various tools that have saved me a terrific amount of time. The water for our home is drawn from a lake and I needed to measure how long the line is…Google Earth. I needed to get an estimate on gravel for our driveway…I measured it with Google Earth. I’ve used Google Maps on my phone to find a golf course, an Indian restaurant, a men’s room, where a movie was playing and a guy who could unlock my still running car. Admittedly, I’ve also wasted a good amount of time on the application. Have you seen the monstrous KFC logo smack dab in the middle of the Mojave Desert? Or the Coke
logo made out of Coke bottles? They’re certainly not there because the local traffic would gather enough impressions to make it worthwhile; it’s there because Google Maps/Google Earth gathers enough traffic (and viral spread) to justify the expenditure. A timely application for travelers, at the moment, is an active map that lets you see the proliferation of the Swine Flu (found here).
The Kelsey Group suggests mobile ad revenues (driven largely by search) will double next year to more than $300 million and reach more than $3 billion by 2013. The numbers, while impressive, could be unbelievably higher. While 40% of the available cell phones have internet access, only 14% of users actually use the feature. For businesses (national, regional and local), your ad plan has to include search and mobile.
