Let’s see . . . Google Maps tells me to take a left, and then hang a right at an ad reading, “Click Here Now to Save $$$.” Wait, that can’t be right . . . And it won’t be, but Google has revealed that it will incorporate AdSense into its mapping services.
Bo Majewski, a software engineer at the Mountain-View based company, says, “We are going to make AdSense available for maps.” You can’t get more straightforward than that, yet the details and qualifications are also important. Angus Kidman of ZDNet Australia captured some of them.
“AdSense won’t automatically be added to applications which use maps,” writes Kidman, “but developers will have the option of including it.”
Then back we go to Majewski for a fuller explanation. “You have to sign in and you have to create a special AdSense manager,” Majewski says. “You tell it how many ads you are comfortable . . . and it displays them.”
If you’re wondering what the final product might look like – my imaginary set of instructions at the beginning of this article is probably pretty far off base – Read/WriteWeb’s Josh Catone constructed a likely-looking mockup.
On a side note, has anyone else noticed that Google just hasn’t been able to leave maps alone for this past week or so? Google Earth got a layer of sound and another one relating to seabeds. Google Maps got Street View. And now this. I’m not complaining, but it makes you wonder just how much coffee a certain team in Mountain View is drinking.
