Google Thinks Your Fridge, Thermostat Will Make A Great Billboard

Marketers’ never-ending quest to cram advertising into every square inch of digital space just keeps getting more territory to work with. The next frontier in bringing advertising into your home? Your thermostat and your fridge — because your TV, computer, and phone apparently aren’t enough.

Google, an advertising behemoth in addition to being a search and tech giant, pointed to the future of toaster-based advertising back in December, the Wall Street Journal reports today.

The information comes from a key passage in a letter that Google submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission late last year, but that just became public this week. In that letter, Google wrote that they could soon be serving up advertising and other content on “refrigerators, car dashboards, thermostats, glasses, and watches, to name just a few possibilities.”

Google sent the letter to the SEC just before acquiring thermostat- and smoke-detector-maker Nest in a $3.2 billion deal.

The proliferation of smart devices has its benefits for consumer convenience, but all of that interconnectedness comes with drawbacks — not only advertising, but potential security holes, too.

Many cars already have embedded screens onto which advertising could fairly easily be sent, and Google Glass and smartwatches already exist as wearables.

The future: when your fridge can not only e-mail you that you’re out of yogurt, but suggest a brand for you to buy on the way home, too.

Google Predicts Ads in Odd Spots Like Thermostats [Wall Street Journal]

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