There have been rumblings for quite a while now about how Apple is making moves to be a competitor in the mobile ad space. And why wouldn’t they? It only makes sense, seeing as how they created the device that really launched the mobile ad space in the first place… But outside of blog posts and news reports, I hadn’t seen or heard what their ad platform was going to look like. That is until now.
Feast your eyes and ears on this video. Yes it is 10 minutes long, but it is a must-watch if you have any interest in the future of mobile advertising.
Frankly, I am completely blown away by what Apple is about to do here. They are taking a truly forward-looking and fully interactive approach to mobile advertising. This is going to be a completely new form of ad. The current mobile ads in the space are primarily served by Google, and they consist of text or image ads from the Content network that randomly get shifted into Apps with very little targeting at all. And, as Steve Jobs points out in this video, if you click on them you get rudely yanked out of your app and to the advertiser’s website. Also, a lot of times, this website hasn’t even been created or optimized for mobile browsers!
Apple is going to have a winner on their hands here, no doubt about it. The only question is, how easy are they going to make it for people to create these ads? Obviously the Toy Story 3 example that they gave was a very intensive and professionally created ordeal. Your average local business owner or affiliate is not going to have the ability and the resources to create something on that level. If they make some type of tool with templates, animations, audio, etc. that people can throw together in an ad, that could work. Who knows? Maybe a whole new niche will be born in advertising as design houses learn the iAd system and how to create for it.
The only thing for certain at this point is that iAd is going to be huge. And with the smashing success of the iPad and the huge outlook for mobile internet usage, the sky is going to be the limit.