I'm betting this is going to appear the same way as it does on Waze, which shows fast food logos along your route, as well as popup ads whenever you're stopped. Annoying, but not intrusive enough to be considered a driving distraction, IMO.
As a long time user of Waze, I have begun to notice that their ads are becoming increasingly annoying and distracting. For example, it will give me a pop up covering the screen asking me if I want to go to Taco Bell. While I am a huge fan of Waze, by deviating too far from being just a GPS makes it a bit frustrating at times. If they are looking to monetize the platform, there are surely other ways besides covering up the map!
It's ridiculous on a smaller phone, on my SE these ads for fast food and gas takes up most of the screen. Also ironic considering waze is a pretty locked down app regarding preventing the driver from being distracted and fiddling with it on the fly. If I'm hungry I'll punch something in, and if I need gas I'll stop at any of the half dozen stations on the side of the road, not because of a waze ad. In fact I'll probably start subconsciously avoiding these places that are ruining my navigation experience.
Waze started doing this and it’s annoying, but I’m already looking at waze so it’s typically when I’m stopped or during some other period where I think it’s safe to look at my phone while driving.
I feel sorry for the advertisers as it’s dumb stuff like showing me an ad for “there’s a kfc nearby would you like to eat here” when I’m driving to a business meeting at 10am.
If you read the actual patent filing and look at their claims strategy it's very clear that what they want to be able to do is have it so when you drive by a billboard or road sign you can press something on your car's navigation display to navigate there. That seems like a useful navigation feature (e.g., for getting to a gas station) and not at all related to "beaming distracting ads into your car."
The closest thing to this that exists now is probably the ads in Waze, but those only show up when you're stopped and vanish when you start accelerating again.
It shouldn't be showing ads at all, ever while in a car regardless of whether the car is moving or not.
Maybe these ads are part of the reason every third stoplight I have to honk my horn because the guy ahead of me is dicking around on his phone after it turns green?
It ought to be flatly illegal to visually advertise through an in-car app. An ad is designed to engage attention; visually engaging a driver is the last thing we want on the road. It's beyond stupid.
YOU ARE PASSING A GAS STATION. PLEASE STOP AND BUY IT.
YOU ARE PASSING A SANDWICH SHOP. PLEASE SWERVE LEFT AND BUY SANDWICH.
> singular focus in improving the driving experience
Except for the super distracting Ads that cover half the screen while you're using it every time your car comes to a stop, the sponsored landmark-Ads that put a huge marker over every Dunkin Donuts location while driving, etc.
Having your navigation display change because a company want to divert you from your destination sounds exactly like "beaming distracting ads into my car". Even a message will distract people more than necessary, humans already prove their focus is poor as hell. It'll feel like your car has a life of it's own, and that life is now capitalism.
What a terrible idea and not only for the chance of distracting the driver. Lets put our tinfoil hats on for a moment and imagine that the developers of this system don't properly sanitize the input from whatever sensors look for this advertising data. Now there is another ingress route for a malicious actor.
This has been in my app for a couple years - I hate it every time. Not only is it very clearly advertising, it's nearly always useless because the restaurant/whatever is barely or not at all visible on the approach to the turn. It's pretty clear they're going for paid landmarks, not useful ones (though I don't like landmark-directions either way).
reply