Last week, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published a patent application assigned to Google describing localized wireless advertising. This application, entitled “Method and system to provide advertisements based on wireless access points,” contains a two-sentence Summary section stating “[i]n one embodiment, advertisements are placed in a view of an end user accessing a wireless access point. The advertisements are related to the WAP based on a predetermined criterion.” The application describes targeted marketing depending on the location of the wireless access points (WAP), allowing users to see advertisements specific to that WAP, and also providing a method for providing a portion of advertising revenues to the WAP provider. The first claim of the application claims “[a] method comprising: placing advertisements in a view of an end user accessing a wireless access point (WAP), the advertisements being related to the WAP based on a predetermined criterion.” Note that out of the 24 claims in the application, 19 are independent, describing methods, apparatuses, and machine-readable mediums related to the claimed invention.

U.S. Patent Application Pub. No. 20060059044: LINK
ars technica article: LINK