Making huge strides in its maps features for the users, Google also stepped up its efforts for the developers. Those wanting to monetise their maps applications can now look at much better ways by which ads are displayed in their maps application. Now there are six new ad formats which include various link units as opposed to only ad units being available earlier.
Link units provide a list of topics related to the content which further link to a page of various ads loosely related to that topic. This presents a very unobtrusive way of presenting ads to the user. It might specially be useful in places where space is less and ads have to be compact.
These ads can now also be customised by using a custom colour schemes that match the overall look and feel of the application. Hopefully, these new features can provide much more flexibility and make those ugly ads appear beautiful, now that we have much more creative options available.
If you feel like playing with the new features, you can try them out at the demo posted here on their blog. You might also want to take a look at the developer documentation and the Maps API reference if you really want to get started.
