Google patent could bring ads into your phone

Google’s primary income source is search advertising, but the company regularly tries to find new sources of income, such as charging companies for the use of its otherwise free online applications or selling access to scanned versions of out-of-print books. Variations on any of these approaches could work with its Voice phone service, which is rumored to soon leave beta status behind. A hint that Google might be leaning towards the advertising model came in the form of a patent filed earlier this week, which describes a method of delivering targeted ads to phone users.

The patent application, called “Ringback Advertising,” is assigned to Google. In general terms, it describes a system for delivering ads to any sort of phone system, including IP, cellular, or landline phones. The idea is to place software somewhere within the flow of telephony data that can identify when a given call is not active, then request audio ads for delivery during that time. Although this obviously pairs nicely with Google’s Voice service, there’s no reason it couldn’t be rolled out to telcos that choose to partner with the search giant.

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