Google and the art of self defense: location-based mobile advertising patent is probably anti-Apple weaponry

Along with a lot of other people, I did a serious double take when I saw this one. Google has patented the use of location in mobile advertising. This license has the potential to be devastating for companies involved in mobile marketing. But how likely is it that Google will start throwing its weight around this one?

What’s the patent, exactly?

What Google now has the patent for boils down to this:

- Using location as a factor to decide whether an ad should be served or not (targeting and relevancy)
- Tracking the performance of an ad using location (metrics and analytics)
- Using location to determine what kind of content should be included in an ad (custom landing pages, banners, etc.)
- Allowing advertisers to enter their own location data for better ad targeting (advertising platforms)

So if even part of the reason an ad publisher serves a particular ad to a consumer is because of that users location, they have now infringed Googles patent. Part of the patent covers just LOOKING at location information – even if you don’t use that information, Google has patented “accepting geolocation information associated with the requested”.

What does this mean?

It means that Google has a pretty broad hold on the world of location-based advertising. The real question is what is Google going to do with that? If you read through the patent description (warning: it’s LONG), Google spends quite some time talking about the efficacy of services like Adwords and how they can be effected by this. It very much gives the impression that this entire system has been developed in order to allow search-related advertising banners to serve better targeted results.

The problem is that the actual patent covers a much larger range of mobile advertising channels. Mobile marketing is a very diverse area, with a large number of possible methods for serving ads. But this patent could potentially move in on any of them – if they want to use location as a targeting factor. It may be targeted at banner ads that accompany search results, but it could be used by Google to control targeted SMS ads, or idle-screen advertising. It doesn’t matter what the channel is that you use in mobile, Google now has a hold on any location targeting you might want to use.

This isn’t NECESSARILY a bad thing

Depending on how unpleasant Google wants to be, this may or may not be a bad thing. An interesting thing that has begun to happen in recent months is a proliferation of high-stakes legal battles between global mobile companies. In particular, Apple. The creator of the iPod is seeming a little punch-drunk these days, taking repeated swings at fellow giants Nokia and HTC (although, in fairness, Nokia started it). That arena has traditionally been fairly quiet, but there could be a lot of splash damage – for instance, if Apple successfully wins its patent battle against HTC, it will effectively cripple sales of the Nexus One in the United States.

Given that this patent has been sitting in review since 2003, I find it very interesting that it has suddenly been awarded now, when Google is feeling under threat from continuing Apples legals shenanigans. After the acquisition of mobile advertising company Quattro, Apple now has its own fully functional mobile advertising division. Googles win on location-based advertising could very simply be its way of saying to Apple “now, we’re not going to hurt one another, are we?”

It might not effect smaller companies and other advertising agencies at all. It’s quite possible Google will just hold this patent in reserve until it feels sufficiently threatened.