Why the wait on Google+ for businesses? Ads.

So far, Google+ is for people only.

Google has advised businesses, organizations, and brands — basically, any entity that isn’t an individual human being — to hold off on setting up a Google+ presence.

Eventually though, Google will allow businesses to join. Over at VentureBeat, Jolie O’Dell quotes a nameless Google spokesperson:

While Google is mum on exactly what the business profiles will include, the spokesperson did say, “You can expect to see a level of analytics and measurement that you’d typically find in Google products as well as a nuanced approach to how things are shared. It encourages and enhances conversation, it doesn’t just put things in the stream.”

A “nuanced approach how things are shared” sounds an awful lot like code for Google+ Ads.

My bet: when these Google+ business profiles go live, they’ll be heavily tied into Google’s existing advertising infrastructure, and we’ll see the rollout of something very similar to Facebook’s ad targeting system:

Think about it. If you’ve bought into the whole Google lifestyle, they have your search history, email, breadcrumbs scattered across the web through Analytics… and now, your social graph. What would you do if your company had all of that?

Here’s a fun experiment you can do at home: if you’re on both Google+ and Facebook, go take a look at each sites. Compare and contrast. Did you notice what’s conspicuously missing from Google+? Yup. Ads.

Right now, my Google+ experience is entirely ad-free. But my gut tells me that’s going to change pretty soon.