Why is Google promoting Maps in India?
Google Maps like a lot of other Google products has been a true savior. Also like a lot of other Google products, Maps has managed to sell itself on its own, purely on its prowess to guide people effortlessly with accuracy.
Maps has also managed to see off international competitors like Apple Maps and even local counterparts like MapMyIndia.
However, curiosity still makes us wonder how Google earns money by providing most of its products for free. We all know Google’s main revenue is through advertising but how much does Maps earn for them?
To add to that, not only are we in the dark about how Maps make money, we are also at split ends to figure out why is Google promoting and investing so much on marketing Maps in India?
To understand this, we need to take a step back and find answers to some more preliminary questions, like
- How does Google Maps work?
- Apart from your phones, where else is Google Maps used?
Let’s start with answering “How does Google Maps work?”
The above video gives a basic understanding of how google maps work. It basically says that when you switch on location services of your app to use Google Maps, you are anonymously sending data about your location. This location specific data being sent by other users using Google Maps at the same time is used by Google to estimate the number of vehicles on the road in that area.
This means, more the number of people using Google Maps, more accurate the time and traffic estimation is.
This explains, why Google wants more and more people to start using Google Maps on a regular basis in India. Which is why we are seeing the below engaging marketing campaign by Google promoting Google Maps in India under the campaign, #LookBeforeYouLeave
But this, still does not answer our question, why invest millions in promoting Google Maps in India? To understand this, let’s see how Google is making money in India.
Here’s how Alphabet, Google’s parent company defines its two business categories
Google: “Search, Ads, Commerce, Maps, YouTube, Apps, Cloud, Android, Chrome, Google Play as well as hardware products we sell, such as Chromecast, Chromebooks and Nexus.”
87% of Google’s revenue is still from advertising sales
Other Bets: “Access/Google Fiber, Calico, Nest, Verily (formerly Google Life Sciences), GV (formerly Google Ventures), Google Capital, X (formerly Google [X]) and other initiatives.”
Having said that, Google is facing huge competition from the advertising juggernaut that Facebook has become, especially in mobile advertising and U.S.
With China practically out of the picture for both tech giants, the next big market for both advertising behemoths then becomes India and the next big bet for Google to generate revenue, according to analysts at Morgan Stanley, then becomes none other than Maps. Source
According to analysts at Morgan Stanley, Google Maps remains a hugely under monetized asset for Google and could give an incremental revenue of $1.5 Bn in 2017.
While search ads will continue to dominate majority of Google’s advertising revenue, it is understood that the next growth is going to come from mobile advertising. The ability to show a contextual right message, at right place and right time, real time is what is poised to become Google’s strength and Maps could play a huge part in giving muscle to it. Being an integral part of user’s phone.
While Google, is still slowly rolling out on how to monetize Maps at the B2C side, with the rise of businesses dependent on hyperlocal services, Google Maps has already established itself as indispensable and integral part that ties the entire ecosystem
Below are some of the use cases where businesses are using Maps
- Location Tracking
- Store Locator
- Visualization
- Travel Planning
- Routing & Logistics
Yet again, iterating the same point, all of the above means that for businesses to continue paying Google Maps and for new ones to adopt their paid services, it becomes imperative that they drive massive adoption on more and more phones in India and get more accurate.
To add to all the above, Google Maps wants human help to be more intelligent and further develop more use cases and all this will be only possible if more and more users know about it and know how to use it.
Maps is being promoted not just to make more money from Maps but also to increase local mobile advertising. Google knows that it works best when all its products talk to each other. With “near me” searches, we are looking at Maps, Search and Mobile talking to each other at the same time to deliver a great user experience.
So it is all a part of a bigger picture and the massive potential that lies in Google Maps for it to be promoting so extensively in India. Get ready for ads in Google Maps that try to
- get you to stop for filling up your car or
- to make you eat at a Dominos or
- to drive footfalls for a Nike store near you
- increase visits for a newly opened dental clinic
The possibilities with Maps are endless, no doubt people at Google are excited and asking users in India to always, #Lookbeforetheyleave
