"Turn after the Dunkin Donuts on the right onto Maple Street"

This has been in my app for a couple years - I hate it every time. Not only is it very clearly advertising, it's nearly always useless because the restaurant/whatever is barely or not at all visible on the approach to the turn. It's pretty clear they're going for paid landmarks, not useful ones (though I don't like landmark-directions either way).

Waaaaaaaiiiiittt, wait, wait, wait, wait. Hold up. You mean the comment you're responding to isn't being sarcastic?

No. I've been living outside the US since 2014 and just noticed it recently as I was back using driving directions. Seems to be at least once a trip, once an hour. Only ever uses large chain restaurants / banks as landmarks. Doesn't happen at all in Japan (yet).

Jesus wept, that's asinine.

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.

> Oughta start taking bets on how long until this makes its way into Waze

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.

I immediately bounced off Waze because of all the advertising strewn throughout it, and the couple times I've re-checked over the past few years were all as bad. It's incredibly intrusive and disruptive, I have no idea why people use it nowadays.

waze is even worse because the ads pop up on you during navigation like a malicious webpage from 2003. I pulled over and uninstalled the app the first time that happened and never looked back.

Brawndo has what plants crave!

We're getting closer and closer every day.

Sometimes I’m glad I don’t live in the US. I heard these things on HN and I think, oh that’s absurd that doesn’t happen! Like advertising in windows 11, never seen it in Singapore and Taiwan. But then people show screen grabs and I’m like wow wtf!

Not dunkin donuts specifically yet, despite being near one, but yes to Wendy's, Taco Bell (in particular), Walmart, Best Buy, and several others at least.

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).

Could someone please point me to the spot in Google’s ads product to purchase these ads-in-navigation-directions? If these are really ads, there will be a place to buy them. Google doesn’t run ads for free.

They don't have to let small customers buy them, or put them up for auction like their other ads. Just offer it to big companies directly, especially ones that might be visual landmarks like a McDonald's or a Dunkin Donuts.

Google does not do this; they don’t have secret offline ad sales. Even their largest customers have to go through a UI to place every ad.

That’s why ads are so profitable for Google. The entire system is highly automated, which lowers costs.

It's kinda funny that you think there are no B2B sales or promotions involved in the world's largest advertising business, even in the face of increasingly-numerous evidence of them doing so multiple times for many years. I agree most cases don't, but zero is laughably, trivially false.

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.

Imagine what the global political implications of a landscaping company located between a sex shop and cermatorium being able to place navigational ads might be!

This actually happens in Japan, and until now I assumed it was not advertising.

I would translate it as "turn at the next left; where there is a ______."

The ______ is often a convenience store. hmmmm!

The flipside though is that Japanese urban planning doesn’t use street names the way American/European countries do and literally the only marker is the local konbini at the corner.

And turn at the corner 2-chome 4-ban 5-gou isn’t a helpful thing either.

These aren't ads, they're intended to provide a point of reference for users.

These aren't supposed to be seen as ads, but they are ads. I've never heard "turn right at the public library," but I have heard "turn right at the tiny dunkin donuts across the street from the huge public library."

Yep, it only does this for a single Jack In The Box for me at a trafficlight-eqiuped, large, clearly-marked cross street.

You _really_ need to brush up on your ability to recognize when you're being manipulated. If you can't see these as advertising you're probably misidentifying countless other ads in your life.