… Of course it is there. Who can doubt it for a second? The challenge is not to see it coming, but to figure out how it should be rolled out. It takes one hell of a technology to track human beings geographically and offer an interaction based on that geodata.

This week, the GigaOM Mobilize Conference took place, gathering a handful of top execs from the mobile space.

“Big advertisers aren’t interested in location based today,” said Lee Ott, Global Director, Yahoo oneSearch. “They just want to get in front of their customers.” But then he added that “making location an attribute of targeted advertising is on the way.” (via Vator)

That is a good step forward: Geobased advertising is indeed a great targeting feature for advertisers, probably more valuable than demographics-based or social graph-based targeting technologies. Unfortunately, the Conference was mostly about identifying the existing mobile infrastructure issues that create clutter in the deployment of the geo-based Web. Not there yet.

There cannot be too much precipitation into this new geoWeb phenomenon. The technology is not ready yet. Online maps providers do not offer bullet-proof mapping solutions. Maps are the core of the much anticipated geoWeb: At Click2Map, we analyze of lot of different behaviors around map creation and map distribution. Conclusion so far: Online maps’ interfaces are not very user-friendly, and the purpose of interacting with a map is not clear yet for mainstream consumers.

For example, a map search for a Chilean wine will often take you to a wine store based in New Jersey that sells this wine, whereas you as a user was just curious to see the landscape (via Earth) where the wine grew on. The search algorithm for maps does not integrate users’ intentions (intentions as John Battelle defined it). From this standpoint, it would be craziness for advertisers to throw their marketing budgets in such a clunky technology. Not there yet.

Today, the growth of online maps is still nurtured by passionate early-adopters. Mainstream consumers won’t accept going through the clutter of a technology that’s not consumer-ready.

However, video games developers are already starting to run wild with the technology provided by online maps’ juggernaut. As found via Veryspatial, this game below integrates geoWeb technologies to offer a near-real-life experience to its players. Just like Second Life inspired many to consider 3D collaboration spaces (like IBM) as a productivity solution, location-based gaming (Jess of Veryspatial calls it LBG, sounds kind of like LGBT to me, but probably because I live in San Francisco) could be the gateway that will allow the transition to geo-based Web services. At least, let’s hope so.