<<According to a new patent that was just granted to Google, the company could soon extend the reach of its advertising program in Google Maps to Street View. This patent, which was originally filed on July 7, 2008, describes a new system for promoting ads in online mapping applications. >>

Patent: (It was not possible to post a bit.ly link here)
Real Estate in Panoramic or 3D Mapping Environments for Advertising – http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=/netahtml/PTO/search-adv.html&r=2&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=PG01&S1=google.AS.&OS=an/google&RS=AN/google

Source:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_could_soon_augment_old_billboards_in_street.php

Thanks for not posting a Bit.ly shortening link here (that service is blocked in China) but the real source link, which works :)

A comment from Alexander van Hoorn from a year ago:

<<They could also put ads inside street view: use image-to-text to detect billboards and replace the part of the image with ads from Adsense.>>
http://blogoscoped.com/forum/137383.html

Nice. I wasn't even being serious at the time, but it may be a good idea after all.

Anyway, this patent was set more than one year after the launch of Street View. How did they expected to get money from it before?

It's not a good idea, and I don't see it being pursued by Google for legal reasons. Those (physical) billboards are owned by plenty of someones who'll claim IP rights to decide what appears within their frames, whether actual or virtual. So at best Google will be able to mask their contents, but not replace them with any new messages.

Ianf: However if they would actually rebuilt the whole billboard with a 3D model, Google would probably be fine, right?

Perhaps, but then the more artificial content is being inserted (seamlessly, one hopes) into interactively drawn 3D-photo street scenes, the less convincingly truthful the latter become. From what I gather, StreetView's main navigational advantage over any potential/ possible Second-Life-like graphic area renderings is its realistic world imagery. So why would Google risk losing that in exchange for hard to read perspectivistic-3D ad impressions?

> So why would Google risk losing that in exchange
> for hard to read perspectivistic-3D ad impressions?

Money? :)

This assumes that such in-frame floating-by billboard ads will have sufficiently high click-through [http://google.com/search?q=define%3AClick-through] to be worth the bother. Billboards come in many forms, but, if we discount the American huge near-highway ones and concentrate on [European] in-town smaller/ square shapes, I doubt these would become natural focal points during StreetView browsings. Google *may* test such a concept for a while, but, if the returns don't live up to the expectations, they will cease and desist the practice forthwith.

Hmm, clicks or perhaps pay-per-display brand ads...