Edit: Oughta start taking bets on how long until this makes its way into Waze, and then how long until Google prevents us from turning Waze's voice nav off.
Waze is already serving very aggressive modal-type ads mid-navigation.
I got a pop-up for a car repair shop 20 minutes out of my way, _mid-navigation_ with a big "add to route" option. Could not swipe it away, had to press a small 'x' button to close the ad. All this while driving and trying to figure out which way I should go the next intersection.
We're getting closer and closer every day.
Edit: ah, yeah, as reustle says, banks have made multiple appearances. Far less than fast food though.
Honestly they're a usually reasonable landmark choice, they tend to be at corners and are intentionally eye-catching and recognizable. But I hate it. And I'm pretty sure that's just being used as justification for why the "feature" as a whole is acceptable (it's not).
That’s why ads are so profitable for Google. The entire system is highly automated, which lowers costs.
Big businesses absolutely have inside access to get things done that are not generally available. Heck, that's practically Google's entire support strategy - know someone who knows someone, otherwise deal with the automation which just repeats "no" in a loop. Sometimes it's just because it's not ready for wider onboarding (big customers get tapped for trialing big new features (like Uber/Lyft/etc's rideshare integration in maps), not all of which ever go further), sometimes very clearly not. E.g. current Facebook/Google legal battles, like https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/14/google-facebook-ceos-oversaw... , and that's far from the first. It's just the latest and greatest and stands a chance of actually going somewhere.
Sure, they may not be phoning up a friend and passing $$ directly to dodge using the UI's pricing. Instead they get automation built for them, so they don't have to do that. Because you're right, it doesn't scale.
