Google Eyes Future For Enhanced Campaigns: Ads On Thermostats, Wearables, Refrigerators And More

Google is looking ahead to a future in which ads are served up on any number of “smart” devices in your home, in your car and on your body.

In a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission the company makes its case for not breaking out ad revenue performance by mobile devices in part by saying the definition of “mobile” is continually morphing and it could soon include serving ads on any number of devices beyond the smartphone, tablet and desktops of today:

We expect the definition of “mobile” to continue to evolve as more and more “smart” devices gain traction in the market. For example, a few years from now, we and other companies could be serving ads and other content on refrigerators, car dashboards, thermostats, glasses, and watches, to name just a few possibilities.

 

The letter, first reported on by the Wall Street Journal, goes on to state that Enhanced Campaigns offers the platform for serving across all of these “smart” devices:

Our expectation is that users will be using our services and viewing our ads on an increasingly wide diversity of devices in the future, and thus our advertising systems are becoming increasingly device-agnostic. Enhanced Campaigns was specifically designed to help advertisers become more efficient in a multi-device future … Because users will increasingly view ads and make purchase decisions on and across multiple devices, our view of revenue is similarly device-agnostic.

Google may not have any deals with refrigerator manufacturers, yet, but it of course already produces Google Glass, said it would acquire smart thermostat maker Nest just weeks after filing this letter, struck an alliance with auto makers such as Audi and General Motors to bring Android to “connected cars”, and most recently announced Android Wear devices which will start with watches.

Google has said ads would not appear on Google Glass, but it has also been granted a patent for “pay-per-gaze” technology. And, yes, when news of the Nest acquisition broke its founders wrote “Our privacy policy clearly limits the use of customer information to providing and improving Nest’s products and services.” However, privacy policies morph along with definitions of technology.

Google’s statements in this letter certainly paint a picture in which ads — Google’s bread and butter — infiltrate throughout its growing data and device ecosystem. Made possible by Enhanced Campaigns.

Postscript: See our follow-up story, Google Reassures There Are No Plans To Put Ads In Nest Thermostats.