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Waze officially launches its ad program for small businesses
- atomicwrites 9y agoThis actually seems like a good idea if it just shows up when in your map view rather than pulling your view to the pin. It would be well targeted adds without requiring you to collect data about the user. If its visible it's because you're close.
- chickenfries 9y agoYou better believe they're going to collect that user data though.
- ocdtrekkie 9y agoFor one, Waze's whole raison d'etre is to collect data from drivers. And then yeah, for advertisers, advertisers want to know how many people of what demographics see their ads and the like.
- JoshuaRedmond 9y agoI hope that they are targeted a bit more locally than they are at the moment - yesterday I had one pop up when I stopped at some traffic lights 20 minutes from home (having been driving for an hour and a half) that suggested I take a 55 minute detour to go to a KFC!
- hkmurakami 9y agoI wonder what the conversion rate is for a 30+ minute detour for some hot wings would be. ;)
- leowoo91 9y agoI wonder how many people remember it is acquired by Google?
- js2 9y agoIt would be nice if Waze launched an ad-free program for its users. What would they have to price an ad-free program at?
- Mononokay 9y agoIt would need to be a subscription service - unlike a game or a disk partitioning tool, they can't support it for four years, then stop supporting it after without taking negative PR. Realistically, an ad-free program subscription would usually be marked up from what they can make per-user per-month off of ad revenue - so maybe take ad revenue, add $5 and round to the nearest ten?
- aylons 9y agoI really doubt their yearly revenue for user with ads would be more than 5 dollars a year. So, 10 dollars a year. Add some nice corner-case features, maybe some gamefication bonus, and it could work. As a sidenote, "add $5 and round to the nearest ten" is equivalent to "round to the next ten" everytime.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- woliveirajr 9y agoJust to nitpick, if they earn $6, you add $5 then it'll be $11, rouding to next ten will make it $20, not $10...
- ribosometronome 9y agoHe's saying that adding $5 and rounding to the nearest ten is same as rounding to the next ten. So 6+5 = 11 rounds to 10. 6 rounded up to the net is 10.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- DanCarvajal 9y agoI'd prefer if drivers watched the road and not pop up ads on Waze.
- scarmig 9y agoHow long until Waze collaborates with Waymo (Wazemo?) and the ads are just for the captive passengers, not the driver?
- test6554 9y agoPortable VR headsets are going to have a killer app. Not having to pay attention to self-driving car ads.
- scarmig 9y agoI'm imagining Google releasing an AR app that perfectly represents the reality around you, except stripped of all ads. (Except the subtle consumer friendly ones that they put in, of course.)
- tedivm 9y agoThe ads only show up when the car isn't moving, such as when it's stopped at an intersection.
- bhhaskin 9y agoA drive would still be distracted while stopped at an intersection.
- DanCarvajal 9y agoI'd prefer if drivers watched the road and not pop up ads on Waze.
- fitzroy 9y agoNow Waze has an incentive to choose the route with the most red lights. The driving version of the "slideshow" listicle. 'You can skip this intersection in 15, 14, 13...'
- nix0n 9y agoHopefully they're better than Google Maps at showing ads for things that are actually open.
- svcphr 9y agoI'm surprised more apps with maps don't do this, like Uber.
- silveira 9y agoI would pay a reasonable fee to not have ads on Waze.
- iggg 9y agoUse an ad blocker and they will rarely show up. When I stop, Waze shows me what people reported on the road ahead. "Car stopped in 3 miles."
- ohazi 9y agoAd blocker on a mobile device?
- mike-cardwell 9y agoI use AdAway - https://f-droid.org/packages/org.adaway/ https://f-droid.org/packages/org.adaway/ on my Android phone. Downloads lists of advertising hostnames and blocks them via /etc/hosts. It's licensed under GPL-3.0. Requires you to have rooted your phone.
- el_duderino 9y agoAnother option for Android users (that doesn't require root) is Blokada -https://f-droid.org/packages/org.blokada.alarm/ https://f-droid.org/packages/org.blokada.alarm/
- mike-cardwell 9y agoJust looked into how it works without root access. It apparently creates a local VPN interface and routes traffic through it. Which is a fine way of doing it, except it prevents you from using other VPNs on the same device at the same time - https://blokada.org/api/v3/content/en/help.html#howitworks https://blokada.org/api/v3/content/en/help.html#howitworks - FWIW, this is also how Tor on Android (using Orbot) works for non-rooted devices (if you want to routes apps that don't have socks proxy support). Just to clarify re "VPN", it's not actually a VPN to any third party service, it's just a local "fake" VPN interface to intercept traffic.
- jim_dow_jones 9y agoDoes anyone else open Waze only momentarily to make sure their primary route does not have significant traffic? I don't need it to direct me the entire drive, so I just quickly check to make sure there isn't some catastrophic accident that will block my path. After that I shut it down, put on a podcast, and go on my merry way.
- iggg 9y agoThe optimal route will often change during my commute. Your commute may be significantly shorter than mine.
- homerguy69 9y agoI did do that for sometime but I found that my commute has gotten worse with more accidents and constructions so I'm finding that almost 40% of the time my commute changes with Waze with new routes saving me tons of time in traffic. Plus it allows me to explore the country side more as a side-effect.
- r00fus 9y agoYeah, I tend to do this, but rarely (about once in a couple of months) traffic gets so bad on a specific part of my commute (where I literally have no viable alternative routes) that I'd wished I'd kept it on so I could turn around and just WFH. Waze has saved me a couple of times where I find that out 5-10m through the drive and just turn around so I don't sit through important meeting in the car. Google/Apple maps just don't update fast enough as they're not crowdsourced.