[OSM-talk] Advertising on OSM?

[Jochen Topf]

On Fri, Jan 05, 2007 at 07:11:31PM +0100, Lars Aronsson wrote:
> If Google really wanted, they could get a clue about the CGI 
> parameters lat and lon and present relevant local information, but 
> it seems they aren't really all that smart.  So we need to help 
> them.  When I link to 
> http://www.openstreetmap.org/index.html?lat=58.4&lon=15.6&zoom=10
> there is a name "Linköping" in that map, but the Google doesn't 
> OCR the tiled image to find that name.  Instead I'm presented with 
> Google ads for "Toronto Map & Guide" and "Dubai Map & Guide".
> 
> Is there any way (with AJAX?) we could present "Linköping" in text 
> in that HTML page, and make that text change as the user zooms and 
> pans?  Perhaps a simple HTML reload with new static text after a 
> certain distance of pan&zoom and some delay?
> 
> If we could solve this problem, we could get more relevant ads and 
> probably pull in more money.  As we continue to add more 
> placenames to our maps, the ads would only get better.

That is not going to work. Google only looks at the page occasionally
and can't cope with dynamic content.  Google doesn't pull in the page
each time somebody looks at it to figure out the right adwords. That
would immediately double your load on the server when for every request
from somebody you'll get another one.

If we want location-aware ads, then we probably have to roll our own. Or
maybe some advertising service can cope with that.

I'd suggest getting rid of the Google Ads as they don't bring enough
money. At the moment there are not enough people looking at the pages
anyway. At some point I think some kind of affiliate program could be
started (but then OSM would need some sales people!).

Jochen
-- 
Jochen Topf  jochen at remote.org  http://www.remote.org/jochen/  +49-721-388298