Implications for Google Ads in Panoramio Placemarks

Frank Taylor, writing at the Google Earth blog, reports that he’s seeing actual adds in Panoramio placemarks and suggests they may have been there before and he just noticed them. His take on the potential implications:

If the results of this test are good, maybe Google will allow other KML developers to add Adsense code in their files. This might give incentive to some organizations and individuals to devote more attention to the quality of their KML files. Or, it could mean we’ll get even more ad-filled content detracting from the quality of our experience. Only time will tell.

I love the idea of higher quality data and perhaps ad revenue might encourage that. On the other hand, it might just encourage poor data that support ads (spatial splogs?). I’m still waiting for a more effective uptake of KML as tags for geodata. I suggested that if this became a de facto way to geotag data sets, then KML search could underlie many geodata Web searches.