Commuting Communications

Photo of a rearview mirror with an OnStar button

Commuting Communications

COMMUTING TIMES BY COUNTRY

US Census

Americans spend an average of 48 minutes commuting every day.

THOUGHT: That’s a lot of time on a bus or in a train or…driving a car.

That’s why so many people are working in so many ways to capture your ambulatory attention beyond the radio dial.

The OnStar vehicle communication system has been on the market since 1996, so a vehicle as a communications platform is certainly not a novel concept. But the automobile continues to get more and more connected.

Ford Fiestas can play Pandora channels and read tweets.

Now BMW is integrating Yelp into it’s dashboards, so cars can now make suggestions based on ratings sites.

Given what appears to be a clear trend toward location-aware, Internet-friendly smart cars, it would be wise to take a look at ensuring your content is geo-tagged so that it can be recognized by these potential customers.

Last month, Toyota unveiled it’s Vun-Vii concept car and Google has been working on its self-driving car for, like, ever. Google looks at those 48 minutes of commute time and thinks there are a lot of ads that could be served up during that time if people weren’t distracted with driving.

You know I’m all about technological innovation but as someone who absolutely loves to drive, I do believe it would be a truly sad day if we did away with actual driving. Think I’ll get me a Red Barchetta.

Speaking of which, drive safely this holiday weekend.

The Daily Numbers will be taking next week off, both in email and podcast format, so we’ll see you next year.

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Thank you for you, Awesome Subscriber. I hope you have a happy and prosperous new year.

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