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Finding iAds in the Wild
Monday, July 19, 2010

For all of its impressive buildup, the July 1 launch of Apple’s iAd platform for advertising within iPhone/iPod Touch apps had an underwhelming rollout. Just last month, Apple CEO Steve Jobs proclaimed that $60 million had been committed to iAd buys by advertisers through the end of this year. But two weeks after the platform’s rollout, few iPhone apps seem to carry the ads, and so far as we can see only two creative executions are running in the few apps carrying the ads.

First, where can you find them? While several app developers have already embedded the code that will carry iAds, regular delivery of the rich media units was occurring last week for only a handful of apps. A tip calculator, Tipitude, has been cycling through the two ad creatives available advertising Dove for Men and the Nissan Leaf. Late last week, AP Mobile became the first branded media publisher we could find carrying the units. In Tipitude, the iAds are visible on every screen. In AP Mobile they often appear on article pages.

For all intent and purposes, the Dove for Men and Nissan Leaf ad executions look like mobile minisites that simply are accessible from within the host app. Animated banners attract the user’s attention on the page, but clicking through the ad usually requires a noticeable load time. In the case of the Dove ad, videos of two baseball stars as well as interactive displays of their play rooms form the heart of the ad. It looks and feels like a straightforward microsite. Likewise, the Nissan Leaf ad lets the user rotate an image of the car to drop into different informational sections and an email sign-up.

A revolution in mobile advertising? Well, not quite and not yet. The functionality embedded in the iAd platform pretty much mimics any stand-alone app, which is fine if the creative execution is engaging. The Dove and Nissan ads are workmanlike and informative but uninspired. Neither ad is especially well targeted, since there seems to be little range available yet for iAd inventory.

Off the record, several ad agencies say they are preparing iAds for deployment in the coming months. Many advertisers simply had not had enough time with the tools to launch ads in tandem with the platform’s formal rollout. But it is unclear what manner of inventory will be available to advertisers.

Apple has offered the platform mainly as a solution to small and medium app developers looking for a more substantial revenue stream than they are receiving from the display ad networks currently available. For major publishers, however, using iAds requires a substantial revenue share with Apple of 60%/40% in the publisher’s favor. For larger brands with their own sales force and existing relationships with clients, there may be no advantage to splitting revenue and sharing a client with Apple when their own sales forces can generate more revenue through direct sales while keeping the client relationship to themselves.


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