Google’s traffic app Waze has wide opened the doors for Ads

It was in 2013 when Google has bought Waze for $1 Billion, its been a long time since both of them are connected. Waze is the world’s largest community-based traffic and navigation app. It is shared by many local users and they can share the updates on the app individually about the traffic, fuel, current situation etc.

Waze has given up the platform for the local or small brands to display themselves on their app. Waze previously was featuring only big brands like Dunkin’ Donuts for this many years. The minimum rate charged for the big brands varied from $850 per day, which Waze reduced it to $2 per day for local and other tiny brands.

This app tracks the location on real time basis when user is travelling. Depending on that whenever the user halts for more than 3 seconds, the ad is displayed on the app. These are such types of ads which most probably are not denied by the users on the go.

Waze has introduced this display ad feature, from Wednesday, Mar 28, which was announced by Waze executive Matt Phillips. He also mentioned that such type of initiative will eventually increase awareness about the local brands and will help to hike up the business. One of the case shared by Waze was of Kung Fu Tea, who participated in ad plans and earned a huge amount of profit by driving more than 5500 users to the store.

Philips mentioned that Local ads is still in the beta stage and has received positive response. The unique characteristics about that app is that, the ads displayed depends upon the proximity to businesses. “Our target market is truly local businesses — any business that has a store sign in front,” Phillips said. “We’ve tested with restaurants and hardware stores, shopping malls and movie theaters.” Also adding that the teams are different for Google Maps and Waze.

Compared with Google Maps, Waze’s user base is tiny: It currently has 100 million monthly active users versus the more than 1 billion that Maps hit in 2014.