Google to add on hold advertising to Google Voice
By Sean P. Aune
While it isn’t official yet, it appears that Google may have discovered how it can monetize its popular phone service, Google Voice.
According to UnwiredView.com, Google filed for a patent with the US Patent & Trademark Office back in January of this year for a system that will play advertisements over the Google Voice system while you wait for calls to ring through.
For those unfamiliar with Google Voice, it was a system formerly known as GrandCentral that Google purchased back in 2007. You are provided with a virtual phone number that will ring as many other phones as you want (i.e. your office line, home phone and mobile number) at the same time so that no one will ever have to guess where you are. It also provides you with voice mail with text transcriptions, calls from your mobile that circumvent your regular plan minutes, the ability to send text and more.
The system described in the patent would work like the Google AdWords system for the most part in that advertisers would bid for ad placement based on criteria such as location and categories. Companies could also purchase ads specific to when consumers called one of their stores or help lines, like when someone was calling a Sprint store, they would hear an ad for Sprint services and so on.
With the announcement this week that Google Voice had released applications for Android and BlackBerry handsets, and the discovery of this patent, we may finally have answers as to how Google will monetize this service. Up until now it had been suspected that there would be some form of subscription plan, and there is nothing to say that won’t still happen at some point, but it is looking now like Google will stick with the familiar advertising monetization scheme it is so well known for.
There is no word when this will be implemented, or if it even will be for sure, but odds are you will be hearing ads when you use Google Voice in the not so distant future.
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on Saturday, July 18th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
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July 19th, 2009
With all the recnt reports out there that people trust TV ads more than online, I’d think people would start understanding how these media could be most effectively used together – broadcast to generate Awareness and Interest, online to stimulate Desire and Action. Integrated is the most efficient approach.