I love patents. The reason for this is that even just watching the types of patents being filed and approved gives us the ability to look into a possible future. We can see the direction that a company is taking or areas they’re interested in investing in. As an Internet Marketer obviously my favorite company to follow is Google.
Well, recently they’ve filed a lot of patents around a single area … being everywhere. Here are the titles of a few patents they’ve secured recently:
- Methods and systems for detecting weather conditions including sunlight using vehicle onboard sensors
- Methods and systems for detecting weather conditions using vehicle onboard sensors
- Location-aware ghost caching in a balloon network
- Biometric authentication substitute for passwords on a wearable computing device
- System and method for providing access points
- Kiosk application mode for operating system
- Creating and organizing events in an activity stream
Now, think for a second about what these all have in common.
If you jumped right to this you didn’t give it a second so I’ll give you another …
Alright, here’s the tie – all of these patents involve pulling data from various sources, from a car now transmitting weather data to the Googlelex to using balloons to connect devices to using your biometrics to authenticate that you are you. Tie this last one to the access point and balloon patent (and others of course … these are just some of the most recent).
Now think about what this means for the direction Google is heading and what this means for marketing (the really exciting part for us here at Beanstalk and probably you … our valued blog readers). This means targeting is about to get far more interesting.
While some of these patents definitely fall more to the functional (a Google Car needs to know the weather conditions both at the vehicle being driven to vehicles in the path the car is set to travel) but further, as an advertiser – if I know it’s a rainy day and I’m marketing umbrellas, that’s a great trigger for ads – especially to mobile. If I know it’s a bright and sunny day in the heat of summer, why not trigger an ad for an ice cream store just around the corner?
But on top of that, using biometrics to authenticate you on a device or kiosk or other access point enables a much higher accuracy rate in determining specifically who they’re tracking, what they’re looking for and how they can be marketed to. An now let’s add to that the interesting patents they’ve previously filed for, including methods for pulling health data (including apps right on my S5) and the targeting is amazing.
It’s a brave new world my friends. And watching Google’s patents will help keep you on the forefront. Or you can keep reading our blog … that may be easier. 🙂