Am I imagining this or have STRAVA *SPONSORED* Integrations just gone live?
The feature was announced back in September 2018 but, for the life of me, I can’t remember seeing it until today in my feed.
It’s a nice little feature, that’s of some passing interest, which also gives the chance for STRAVA to get a bit more revenue…don’t forget, they have to cover the running costs of your free account after all.
There are some examples from my feed shown below and the enhancements seem to be these types:
- If you are using a certain device then STRAVA will kindly just flag it up and I assume this is done for ‘free’. It’s actually quite interesting when I see the relatively high number of WAHOO logos in my feed. So you can see the WAHOO example here
- Then there are sponsored versions of this where presumably WAHOO kindly hands over a few cents for the display of their name and the inclusion of a link. This is basically targetted advertising.
- Here is an example from a WATTBIKE session where, clearly, there will normally be no route image so, instead, a WATTBIKE ad is displayed. STRAVA *DO* clearly mark this as sponsored.
- Instead of a semi-blatant ad like that, there could be details about what was done in the workout. For example, I think this image shows the workout target for a particular Wattbike session
- Whereas this image would show what was achieved in the workout
STRAVA say that these integrations can appear as either a “specific header”, “custom image” or “enhanced map” and that you can disable displaying ads FOR YOUR ACTIVITIES here: Settings > Partner Integrations. I’d be interested to see what an ‘enhanced map’ looks like (please post the image URL below in comments).
I’m guessing that these ‘integrations’ might eventually morph into out-and-out ads to promote new products and product sales.
TAKE OUT: Why not?
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