By Julian Lee
THEY know where you are and where you have been but now, with the help of internet mapping technology, advertisers are trying to predict what you want.
In the coming weeks Google will put logos for fast food chains, coffee shops, hotels and travel agents on its popular maps site.
Its rival, Telstra, is going a step further and is planning to serve up ads based on destinations people are searching for in its mapping product.
From early next year people searching for a hospital on its map, Whereis.com, can expect directions to shops selling chocolates or flowers on the way.
While symbols for schools, train stations and even speed cameras are usually always visible on online maps, advertising has been kept to a minimum for fear of irritating users.
But as pressure builds on media owners to ''monetise'' their key assets, advertising has become inevitable.
Google confirmed it would begin ''the experiment'' shortly but declined to name the participating companies or to say whether company logos would be shown in response to a user's query and subsequently plotted along a route, or if they would remain live on the site permanently.
Google has built a global empire off the back of providing answers and selling advertising against it. In Australia it gets an estimated 90 per cent of the $700 million spent each year by companies buying popular terms entered into Google's search engine.
Earlier this week Telstra's directories arm, Sensis, began offering three advertisers in any given category the opportunity to have their logo and a promotional message pop up in response to a search for a business type on its maps.
Its general product manager, David Egan, said analysing its library of searches to determine what ads would fit a service was the next step.
''We get 1 million searches a year for railway stations. We're trying to figure out what things people might want. It could be a coffee shop or it could be a McDonald's.''
Robert Beerworth, a digital marketing expert at Wiliam, said advertisers were keen to be included in the virtual world, especially at a local level.
''It isn't obtrusive and even if it isn't directly relevant to the search, knowing that there's a restaurant or whatever in the area might be useful.''