Okay, the rumours were true and yesterday (April 8th 2010) Apple’s Steve Jobs announced the release of OS4 for iPhone (rolling out to iPod and iPad soon).
OS4 has 100 new user features, and the one that was most anticipated (at least by the marketing community) was the iAd mobile advertising platform.
Developers have been embedding single adverts in Apps for a while but this is obviosly limited. iAd works like Google AdSense and delivers appropriate adverts into your App experience. iAd allows advertising to appear directly within iPhone Apps, without the need to be redirected to a website.
According to Jobs the average user spends over 30 minutes every day using Apps. If Apple wanted to put an advert up every 3 minutes, that would be 10 adverts per device per day.
That’s the equivilant to 1 Billion advert opportunities per day, being delivered to targeted demographics.
And the creative engaging potential of these adverts is high, as being directly in the OS they can be interactive and utilise video etc.
Apple is going to sell and host the adverts with App developers getting a 60% split.
Question is, is this just another example of Apple trying to squeeze every last cent out of a very loyal (sometimes lemming like) fan base?
Whilst I’m an admirer of Apple I chose not to be customer (I replaced all the Macs in our design studio as they just weren’t worth the extra money) and whether fans will stay loyal and put up with the interruption of advertising to this level within Apps, being delivered directly to their person, wherever they are, has yet to be seen.
What is certain is that this new channel for delivering your marketing message is one that deserves a look. Can you see yourself utilising this channel?
First posted on Marketing.co.uk April 9th 2010
