Google outbidding Facebook and Apple to acquire social mapping service Waze is the latest example of just how crucial location data is in the mobile space.

While Google already has the most widely used mapping tools in mobile, the company laid out a reported $1.03 billion so that its main competitors would not be able to potentially mount a competitive strike against its leading role here. The Waze deal will help Google enhance its own mapping service with a wealth of real-time data on the best drive route to take and traffic.

?For anyone delivering content over mobile, if there are ties to any location-based data or revenue opportunities with local advertising, a decent mapping experience is clearly table stakes,? said Michael Boland, senior analyst and director of content at BIA/Kelsey, Chantilly, VA.

?The bells and whistles are nice, but mapping is a game that is won on data -- socially oriented data is becoming more and more important for real time relevance,? he said.

?Waze CEO Noam Bardin said it best: ?Maps are for mobile what search is for the Web.??

Mapping data is crucial
The deal caps off a year of intense focus on mapping in the mobile space.

Apple, which reportedly also had its hat in the ring to acquire Waze, revealed its first stand-alone mobilemapping service a year ago as part of iOS 6. However, the poorly-executed strategy ended up being one of Apple?s biggest missteps in years as users expressed their displeasure with its lack of accuracy following its release in the fall.

Apple has had a hard time rebounding from its mapping fiasco, with grumblings that it is losing its competitive edge only getting louder in the period since.

?Apple needs mapping data,? Mr. Boland said. ?People always complain about Apple Maps, which is actually a sharp mapping tool. It?s their data that?s terrible.

?They?ve already acquired Placebase and C3 for the 3-D imagery, but what they need is data,? he said. ?The question is whether they will continue to partner to get that data (i.e. Yelp), or make some acquisitions.

?The former probably makes more sense as they don?t need to necessarily own these data sets to utilize them for more robust ? or just basically reliable ? mapping experiences.?

Real-time traffic updates
Facebook was also supposedly looking to get its hands on Waze as the social network tries to build its mobile strategy with a focus on delivering better location-based mobile advertising and optimizing local search results.

Waze offers a navigation application that lets drivers build and use live maps, as well as browse real-time traffic updates and turn-by-turn directions.

By leveraging social networking, Waze is designed to offer more precise directions and more reliable information about local traffic conditions. It has close to 50 million users in 190 countries.

One of the strategic advantages offered by Waze is that it has already acquired significant location-based data through its services and has the infrastructure in place to continue to build a powerful location database.

With mobile users expected to spend a growing amount of time accessing maps from their smartphones going forward, Google hopes to boost its own mapping services through the acquisition.

Google said it is planning to enhance Google Maps with some of the traffic update features provided by Waze. It will also look to enhance Waze with Google?s search capabilities.

En route advertising
?For Google Waze will infuse more social and crowdsourced data to the large corpus of static mapping data that it already has,? Mr. Boland said. ?This has parallels to the direction Google is heading across its products: more of a social layer to add relevance to its longstanding paradigm of keyword based relevance.

?That?s what Google+ is all about, and it gets Google closer to Facebook?s paradigm of status-based relevance, which is based on what you?re doing, seeing, eating or liking,? he said.

?Waze can add where you?ve been and where you?re going which has lots of implications for relevant content delivery for users, and opportunities for advertisers - think offline retailers.?

From a marketing perspective, Google wants to boost its efforts to serve ads to mobile users as they look for directions and traffic information on their smartphones.

Waze is based in Israel. It also has an office in Palo Alto, CA.

?The big opportunity down the road is for them to figure out advertising without harming user experience,? said Chi-Chao Chang, president of product and tech at xAd, New York.

?Mobile is all about local and maps are a very integral part of local,? he said. ?People look for and find places using maps all the time.

?Search advertising is a no-brainer. What's really interesting is figuring out the best ads to display on a route, allowing consumers to discover relevant businesses along the way.?

Final Take
Chantal Tode is associate editor on Mobile Marketer, New York