
Waze officially launches its ad program for small businesses - artsandsci
https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/28/waze-local/
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DanCarvajal
I'd prefer if drivers watched the road and not pop up ads on Waze.

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tedivm
The ads only show up when the car isn't moving, such as when it's stopped at
an intersection.

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jimmy1
I hate this. Focusing on the road, even when at an intersection is still the
duty of the driver. You have to be active and engaged the entire time you are
behind the wheel, not use red lights as an excuse to type out a quick text. I
can't tell you how many times I had to honk the horn because a damned
distracted driver had their heads down at a green light. This is unsafe as
well. Additionally, what if a drunk driver plows through the intersection and
comes at you head on? Instead of any chance of reacting + surviving, you are
dead. What if an ambulance comes, and you are blocking the left turn lane and
you didn't notice because you were too busy looking at a phone or app?

As an aside -- we have 100% proven we simply cannot be trusted with
smartphones or electronics behind the wheel. I know most will think this is
too extreme but I am all for outright banning them from being in the hands of
a driver at. all.

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JoshuaRedmond
I hope that they are targeted a bit more locally than they are at the moment -
yesterday I had one pop up when I stopped at some traffic lights 20 minutes
from home (having been driving for an hour and a half) that suggested I take a
55 minute detour to go to a KFC!

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hkmurakami
I wonder what the conversion rate is for a 30+ minute detour for some hot
wings would be. ;)

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jim_dow_jones
Does anyone else open Waze only momentarily to make sure their primary route
does not have significant traffic? I don't need it to direct me the entire
drive, so I just quickly check to make sure there isn't some catastrophic
accident that will block my path. After that I shut it down, put on a podcast,
and go on my merry way.

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iggg
The optimal route will often change during my commute. Your commute may be
significantly shorter than mine.

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leowoo91
I wonder how many people remember it is acquired by Google?

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js2
It would be nice if Waze launched an ad-free program for its users. What would
they have to price an ad-free program at?

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Mononokay
It would need to be a subscription service - unlike a game or a disk
partitioning tool, they can't support it for four years, then stop supporting
it after without taking negative PR.

Realistically, an ad-free program subscription would usually be marked up from
what they can make per-user per-month off of ad revenue - so maybe take ad
revenue, add $5 and round to the nearest ten?

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aylons
I really doubt their yearly revenue for user with ads would be more than 5
dollars a year. So, 10 dollars a year. Add some nice corner-case features,
maybe some gamefication bonus, and it could work.

As a sidenote, "add $5 and round to the nearest ten" is equivalent to "round
to the next ten" everytime.

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woliveirajr
Just to nitpick, if they earn $6, you add $5 then it'll be $11, rouding to
next ten will make it $20, not $10...

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ribosometronome
He's saying that adding $5 and rounding to the nearest ten is same as rounding
to the next ten. So 6+5 = 11 rounds to 10. 6 rounded up to the net is 10.

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silveira
I would pay a reasonable fee to not have ads on Waze.

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iggg
Use an ad blocker and they will rarely show up. When I stop, Waze shows me
what people reported on the road ahead. "Car stopped in 3 miles."

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ohazi
Ad blocker on a mobile device?

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mike-cardwell
I use AdAway -
[https://f-droid.org/packages/org.adaway/](https://f-droid.org/packages/org.adaway/)
on my Android phone. Downloads lists of advertising hostnames and blocks them
via /etc/hosts. It's licensed under GPL-3.0. Requires you to have rooted your
phone.

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el_duderino
Another option for Android users (that doesn't require root) is Blokada
-[https://f-droid.org/packages/org.blokada.alarm/](https://f-droid.org/packages/org.blokada.alarm/)

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mike-cardwell
Just looked into how it works without root access. It apparently creates a
local VPN interface and routes traffic through it. Which is a fine way of
doing it, except it prevents you from using other VPNs on the same device at
the same time -
[https://blokada.org/api/v3/content/en/help.html#howitworks](https://blokada.org/api/v3/content/en/help.html#howitworks)
\- FWIW, this is also how Tor on Android (using Orbot) works for non-rooted
devices (if you want to routes apps that don't have socks proxy support).

Just to clarify re "VPN", it's not actually a VPN to any third party service,
it's just a local "fake" VPN interface to intercept traffic.

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atomicwrites
This actually seems like a good idea if it just shows up when in your map view
rather than pulling your view to the pin. It would be well targeted adds
without requiring you to collect data about the user. If its visible it's
because you're close.

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chickenfries
You better believe they're going to collect that user data though.

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ocdtrekkie
For one, Waze's whole raison d'etre is to collect data from drivers.

And then yeah, for advertisers, advertisers want to know how many people of
what demographics see their ads and the like.

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nix0n
Hopefully they're better than Google Maps at showing ads for things that are
actually open.

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svcphr
I'm surprised more apps with maps don't do this, like Uber.

