| « My home town Crowborough, East Sussex, England,UK. | The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg » |
Advertising in Google’s 3D World Wide Web
By Nick on October 18, 2008
As Google Earth becomes more accessible to the masses, people will use it for much more than sightseeing. In many ways, it is already a portal to the world wide web – you can explore the globe and open up web sites laden with information about the country, city or building you are looking at. In many cases, images, video and web pages can actually be viewed inside Google Earth so you don’t have to open a separate web browser at all. Alternatively, with the available API, Google Earth can be embedded into websites, so you can access the Earth from your browser instead of accessing your browser from Earth. The two are becoming so integrated that Google Earth is sure to become the 3D version of the world wide web.
Opportunities for profit – advertising in Google Earth
This is all pure speculation on my part, but since Google Earth has more users than the population of Brazil, businesses would be foolish not to consider targeting their advertising at that ocean of potential customers. But what would be the best way to go about it? If Google Earth is a virtual replica of the real world, why not create a virtual replica of your real world business to place inside it?
The above screenshot is taken from the city of Westport in Ireland. Westport is one of the cities that took part in Google’s “Cities in 3D” program, an effort to get local governments to actively participate in recreating their cities in 3D for Google Earth.
The benefits to cities such as Westport include the ability to use the 3D model to assess the impact of proposed buildings, traffic flow, and disaster management in a simulated environment. On top of this, they’ve provided local businesses with a platform on which to sell themselves.
CyberCity 3D claims to be the first company to offer 3D advertising solutions to businesses wishing to utilize Google Earth. They design everything from individual buildings to entire metropolitan areas for local governments. According to their website, they’ve already covered Hollywood, Pasadena and Santa Monica. You’ll need at least version 4.3 of Google Earth with 3D buildings turned on (specifically “Photorealistic”) to see the cities. Here’s Hollywood, complete with bizarre floating buildings:
San Francisco below, is a city that is ready to be painted by individual businesses, if CyberCity 3D don’t get to it first, but there are many more completed cities according to the Google Earth Blog.:
Real Estate shopping in a 3D world
Perhaps one of the most obvious uses of 3D is in real estate. Wouldn’t it be great to fly over a town you’re interested in, swooping down on available accommodations and seeing what they look like from all possible angles in the context of their neighborhood? I found one real estate search that offered such a service, but you have to subscribe to their mailing list to get the 3D layers to actually see the locations in Google Earth – fine if you’re in the market, but not so good for me.
If you were selling your home, one option would be to use a company such as Depict3d.com to build a 3D model of your house for show in Google Earth. This one below is on sale via Heather and Lay Estate Agents and looks beautiful. Trust me, I took a virtual trip to Cardiff to see it for myself.
Conclusion
Whatever your business, creating a unique 3D model and attaching information about your business , even if it is your own home, seems like a sensible form of advertising as we dive into a three-dimensional world wide web. I’ve made a start on my own little advert, but have a lot to learn yet…
Posted in Miscellaneous | Leave a Comment
Possibly Related
- Google Earth Censorship
- Dinosaur Spotting on the Island of Kauai
- Traveling the Virtual Globe from Kakamigahara, Japan
- This is one of the New Seven Wonders of the World, it is the Machu Picchu in the Urubamba Valley in Peru, South America.
- Virtual-Tripping lets you come to see the English city of Sheffield.
Comments are closed.
« My home town Crowborough, East Sussex, England,UK. | Home | The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg »
Mark Ramsay, globetrotting from an armchair in England.