Google earlier this month unveiled Latitude, billed as a way to “see your friends on a map and get in touch.” The service allows individuals to sign up, enter mobile numbers and invite friends via e-mail or their Gmail contacts.
As more individuals sign up, users can agree to share locations with one another. Users can then look at a map on their mobile phone or computer and see the relatively exact locations of their friends.
Perhaps two friends are waiting for delayed flights in neighboring terminals; Latitude can connect them. (Google does have privacy controls in place: A user can share, set or hide his or her location, or turn off Latitude from the privacy menu.)
Of course, if a user’s friends know where he or she is, so too does Google—and eventually, Google advertisers likely will as well.
With such personally relevant information being exchanged between friends via Latitude, marketers will have to keep their ads equally relevant, when and if advertising opportunities emerge. Most interactive marketers can instantly sense the mobile marketing potential.
Google makes no mention of advertising on Latitude. But why wouldn’t it take the same approach as it did in the late 90s with its search engine? Anyone that used Google in 1999 likely remembers how clean the search engine results page looked.
Not only was Google free of video, images, news and other options we see today; search results also appeared without advertising. No local ads. No AdWords ads. No advertising, period.
Only later, once enough search demand had been created, did Google turn on AdWords. Why not take the same approach with Latitude?
So now marketers must wait to see what develops, how many consumers embrace Latitude and how well it works. If all signs begin pointing to a successful rollout and widespread consumer adoption, Google will almost certainly seek to monetize the effort with location-based ads.
Once that happens, mobile and multichannel marketing experts will likely embrace Latitude wholeheartedly to take their mobile marketing efforts to new heights by offering customers in the neighborhood convenience, coupons, special offers and one-to-one communications.
But if and when opportunities like these materialize, advertisers should proceed cautiously. Particularly since the consumer ultimately chooses whether or not to reveal their location, advertisers must deliver the right messages at the right time.
Keeping advertisements relevant and helpful to consumers could very well determine Latitude’s success as a multichannel marketing weapon. When communications begin to waste consumers’ time, consumers may turn their backs on advertisers or, in this case, unfriend them.
In many ways, Google’s future efforts to incorporate advertising into Latitude will most likely make the channel look much like other performance marketing channels, because in performance marketing, relevance always rules.
Until Latitude advertising arrives, continue to review and enhance your local search strategy. This is still the single most important factor that determines how you appear in today’s mobile searches.
Michael Kahn ([email protected]) is senior vice president, marketing, at Performics.
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