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March 30, 2018

Waze officially launches its ad program for small businesses ⁰

With the launch of Waze Local, Google-owned navigation app Waze is offering small businesses a way to market themselves to consumers on the road.

Waze has allowed larger brands to buy ads for years, and it’s been beta testing Waze Local since 2016.

“It’s been a gradual strategy,” said Matt Phillips, who leads the Waze Local team. “We wanted to get it right.”

He added that the key is understanding the needs of small businesses — like the fact that most of them are more interested in driving traffic to their physical stores than their websites.

As Phillips explained it, Waze Local’s “core ad format” is the branded pin, which will appear on users’ screens as they drive near a store’s location. For some advertisers, such as coffee shops, a branded pin might persuade drivers to make a quick detour before they continue their commute. For others, the pin might not lead to an immediate action, but it still helps build awareness.

In addition, Waze Local offers advertisers the opportunity to promote their listings in Waze search results, and to run what the company calls a zero-speed takeover — a big banner ad across the top of the screen, which only appears when the driver has come to a complete stop. And advertisers can see real-time data on how their campaigns are performing.

Waze will charge for ads on a CPM basis, and Phillips said businesses running the most basic campaigns could pay as little as $2 per day.

If you’re worried about the app getting overrun with ads, it’s worth remembering that Waze was already offering these formats to larger advertisers. So you may just see more ads now, and more of them are likely come from local businesses. (Phillips also said Waze will never show more than three branded pins at one time.)

During the beta test, Waze Local ended up driving an average 20 percent increase in navigations to the businesses buying ads. One of the early advertisers was Kung Fu Tea, which saw more than 5,500 drivers navigating via Waze Local to 16 Kung Fu Tea locations over a three-month period.

When asked if Google might eventually connect Waze Local to its other ad products, Phillips acknowledged that Waze does share some anonymized data with Google around things like traffic, but he said, “Our focus is to build this platform for small and medium businesses … We’re happy with the roadmap as is.”

January 17, 2018

Waymos self-driving Chrysler Pacifica begins testing in San Francisco

by MeDaryl • Cars • Tags: automation, automotive industry, autonomous cars, chrysler, Emerging-Technologies, google, robotics, San Francisco, Transport, waymo

Waymo is bringing its self-driving cars back to San Francisco streets for testing. TechCrunch has obtained pictures of the Waymo Chrysler Pacifica autonomous test vehicle on SF city roads, and Waymo confirmed that it is indeed bringing test vehicles back to one of the first spots where it ever tested AVs in the first place.

A Waymo spokesperson provided the following statement about its latest-generation test vehicle arriving in San Francisco:

San Francisco was one of the first cities where we tested our self-driving cars, dating back to 2009 when we traveled everything from Lombard Street to the Golden Gate Bridge. Now that we have the world’s first fleet of fully self-driving cars running in Arizona, the hilly and foggy streets of San Francisco will give our cars even more practice in different terrains and environments.

Waymo has one of the most extensive testing programs of anyone in the industry, in geographic terms; the former Google self-driving car company has now tested its autonomous vehicles in 24 cities across the U.S. Its goal with these tests is to expose its fleet to a wide variety of road and weather conditions, as well as to variances in local traffic patterns and human driving habits.

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In San Francisco, it’ll have the chance to deal with fog, of course, and with roads with steep inclines, as well as fairly dense peak traffic, ample bike, scooter and pedestrian activity, frequent ongoing road work and a lot more.

Waymo revealed last year that its test fleet in Arizona now includes fully driverless vehicles, with no safety driver behind the wheel at all (the cars in San Francisco will have safety drivers, by the way). The cars there can range across the entire area Waymo has set up around Chandler, Arizona for picking up and dropping off members of its pilot program of its forthcoming fully autonomous ride-hailing service.

September 14, 2017

Alphabet is reportedly mulling a $1B investment in Lyft

by MeDaryl • Cars • Tags: Alphabet, google, Lyft, Uber, waymo

It’s about as good a timing as any for Lyft to capitalize on the tidal wave of negative publicity that Uber is facing right now, and it looks like it might end up with a significant investment from Alphabet in the middle of that train wreck, according to a report by Axios.

That’s not to say that this is directly related to Uber, which has a new CEO and is trying to move on from the disaster of the past few months. Still, Alphabet appears to be discussing a $1 billion investment in Lyft in an effort led by CEO Larry Page, according to the report. Lyft last raised $600 million at a $7.5 billion valuation in April.

This would be an interesting move for Google, which invested in Uber early in its life through its investment arm GV. We’d heard some murmurs of something brewing between Alphabet and Lyft for a few weeks, but it was unclear what the outcome would be. Bloomberg also reported the news this afternoon. In the end, it appears that Lyft may get a big infusion of cash to fuel its efforts to pick away at Uber — especially as it appears primed to begin its move internationally, according to a report from The Information.

A big financing round like this would go a long way for Lyft, which can use the capital to provide aggressive driver and rider benefits through promotions. Lyft may have an opportunity to snag momentum away from Uber in key cities by ramping up in marketing and discounts. That is an expensive proposition, to be sure, but Lyft also has the benefit of the wave of troubles Uber has had recently. Such a large investment would also help Lyft remain independent.

Alphabet’s self-driving division, Waymo, has been fighting with Uber in court over allegations of theft of files. Earlier this week, a judge ruled that Uber had to turn over to Waymo the due diligence report for its acquisition of Otto.

Lyft announced that it had begun self-driving car development in earnest in July, saying it would ramp up hiring and had signed a lease for a big Palo Alto facility.

Representatives from Google and Lyft have not yet responded to requests for comment.

August 4, 2017

Uber expands its little trucking business into six new states

by MeDaryl • Cars • Tags: big-tech-companies, business, convoy, google, ride-hailing-apps, travis-kalanick, trucking, Uber, uber-freight, waymo

Uber isn’t just about picking people up for a night out or helping with commutes to work.

The ride-hailing giant is also a trucking business. The same technology (a smartphone and algorithms) that help connect commuters with drivers also can help connect truckers with routes.

Uber’s trucking business, which launched in Texas in May, has expanded to California, Arizona, the Chicago-Midwest region, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina, Uber announced Thursday. Uber also announced its app will now proactively suggest routes to truckers.

“The app will now automatically learn drivers preferences based on their past loads, their location, their home base, and more. When a new load is available that matches these preferences, the app will notify the driver so they dont miss out,” reads a blog post on the announcement.

Here’s how the app works for truckers:

Uber did not disclose how many trucking routes it has helped complete so far, but Bill Driegert, director of Uber Freight, did tell USA Today in an interview that since launching trucking in Texas in January they have “seen a tenfold increase in load volumes.”

The trucking business is an $800 billion-per-year industry that Uber is hoping to get a piece of. It’s an important part of their plan, particularly as the company continues to struggle to overcome the last eight months of scandals that include most of its executive leadership including its CEO being forced to quit (some for sexual harassment allegations) and a current trial over stealing information from Google’s self-driving car division.

For Uber, the trucking business provides a new revenue stream other than consumer rides. It’s already decided to close off some of its business, such as its operations in China and its bike messenger service UberRush.

But Uber isn’t the only tech company trying to modernize the trucking industry. Convoy, a business based in Seattle, launched its own trucking app in 2015. It closed a $62 million funding round last month. Though, that’s far less than the more-than $15 billion Uber has raised in equity and debt financing.

Uber is also betting on a future without truckers, just like it is without drivers (or at least a lot less of them). Uber has a division building self-driving trucks, formerly named Otto after the startup it acquired in 2016.