Waze, the GPS navigation and real-time traffic app owned by Google, is free to download and to use, supporting itself with ads. Now the company is making those ads even more tappable, sending customers right to the ordering app for one of its advertisers, Dunkin’ Donuts.
The Waze app will already tell you that there are three Dunkin’ Donuts stores along your 5-mile drive to work (if you live in New England, there might be even more). Now, the app will give you the ability to place an order at one of those DDs.
Waze can give the store a good idea of when you’ll arrive, since it knows where you are and the current traffic conditions.
It sounds like Waze’s ultimate goal is to cut out the other companies’ apps and to let people place their orders directly through the navigation app. Users still have to download the Waze and Dunkin’ Donuts apps separately, but the stated advantage for them is the ability to “skip the line.”
That only applies inside the store: Dunkin’ confirmed that if you don’t want to actually get out of your car, you have to get in the regular drive-thru line. Your order, however, will be ready.
“[We] look forward to rolling it out with more brand advertisers in the near future to further personalize the driving experience for Wazers saving them time and money,” Jordan Grossman, the company’s head of business partnerships for North America, said in a statement. Just about anything that someone can order ahead and pick up could be ordered through the navigation app.
“Saving money” refers to the company’s other ways of tracking whether users of its maps were making their way to advertisers: Exclusive coupons available in the app designed to catch their attention.
Dunkin’, however, won’t be paying a commission for orders that originate on Waze. Instead, the Associated Press reports, the coffee and doughnut chain will increase its ad spending in return for the new feature.
by Laura Northrup via Consumerist
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