Get ready to spot some RoofSense ads

The MIT Advertising Lab points to this picture of a building rooftop covered by the branding of the business occupying it (in the example: Target). It turns out, reading the comments related to the post, that this Target store is located next to O’Hare airport (Chicago, IL) — the busiest airport in the country, on the path of one of the runways.

The point though is that this kind of practice might become a new advertising mechanism, sort of the billboard-equivalent of satellite photos. With GoogleMaps and MSN VirtualEarth providing high-definition photos of cities, one could figure out some way of displaying advertising/branding messages on rooftops next to popular monuments or coordinates. As to whether this would overlap Google or MSN’s own advertising plans is another story.

Create any kind of new “real estate”, advertising will be one of the first leveraging it.

[via Search Engine Roundtable]