Apple iAd Mobile Advertising Platform

Apple has just officially announced their new iAd Mobile advertising platform in the iPhone OS 4.0 event in San Francisco. Previously many
have speculated that apple is baking their own mobile advertising platform in the oven for sometime after acquiring the mobile advertising company Quattro Wireless for massive $275 million early this year.

What is Apple iAd ?

Apple iAd is Mobile Advertising platform for the iPhone OS4 which will eventually power all the iPhone 3GS, iPod Touch (3rd gen onwards) & of course the most talked about iPad. iAd will be a built directly onto the core OS thus developers will be able to use that platform to monetize the apps that they make for all the apple mobile/handheld products.

Steve Jobs raised an interesting point about mobile advertising, he says – unlike personal computers where people go to a search engine to search for stuff most of the time, on a mobile device they are always inside different apps! So advertising on search isn't very relevant when it comes to mobile advertising.

The average user spends over 30 minutes using apps on their phone. If we said we wanted to put an ad up every 3 minutes, that'd be 10 ads per device per day — about the same as a TV show. We're going to soon have 100m devices. That's a billion ad opportunities per day! This is a pretty serious opportunity, and it's an incredible demographic. But we want to do more than that. We want to change the quality of the advertising. We're all familiar with interactive ads on the web. They're interactive, but they're not capable of delivering emotion

Right now there are thousands of Free mobile apps out there which are ad supported. However most of these ads are poorly designed and doesn't engage the users. One of the biggest issue previously was – there wasn't any multitasking on the iPhone OS. So basically if a user takes an action on the ad it would totally interrupt/close whatever the user was doing previously. However iAd can now totally take the advantage of the the new iPhone OS4 Multi Tasking feature and deliver ads that are Interactive & also deliver emotion.

What is in it for Mobile App Developers?

With the launch of this platform, apple will run some sort of advertising inventory. Thus if you are an app developer, you can be sure to find advertisers for your app. Also this might push the 'freemium' model more, as developers would want to stop charging for apps to get more user base and eventually make the money off from advertising via iAd platform. Most importantly Apple is being very transparent about the revenue sharing of iAd, 60% of what advertisers pay will go to the publisher/developer of the app.

What is so new about iAd Platform?

You must be thinking, why is this any cooler than the other mobile advertising that you may have already experienced on your mobile device? Well, Steve jobs did show some cool iAd demo and after taking a look at some of them I have to say that I'm pretty impressed. In fact I haven't seen anything quite like this before. The most intriguing thing about the iAds are:

• The ads are very interactive: On the first demo, jobs showed off an advertisement inside the Toy Story app and the ad sort of shows up as an integrated microsite in a window. They even included a game inside this ad so the user is tempted to interact with the ad
  
• The ads are location aware & allows in ad purchases: This is definitely revolutionary. Imagine buying movie tickets directly from an Ad. The Ad can use your location and tell you that movie "x" is playing in the cinema near you and you can just click buy to get your ticket!
  
• The ads are motion sensitive, thus more interactive! Steve jobs shows a Nike ad where it shows dunks progressing through the years. and you just need to shake your iPhone to get another dunk!
  

Jobs mentions that – "…in addition to ad agencies being able to make these things, there are hundreds of thousands of iPhone app devs who know how to make these things. Emotion plus interactivity. The ads keep you in your app, so you're much more likely to click on then and explore."

So now apple seems like a serious threat for Google. They pretty much dominate the mobile industry and now they seem to be getting comfortable in the mobile advertising space as well.

What do you think of iAd Platform? Share in comments!

More iAd Stories:

Apple Announces iAd Mobile Advertising Platform – Techcrunch

Apple Debuts Both Ad Platform and Ad Network: iAd – GigaOM

Mobile Advertising Is At A Turning Point, With Google, Apple And The FTC Determining The Future – Mobile Marketing Watch

Steve Jobs Says 'Most Mobile Advertising Really Sucks,' So Apple Is Introducing the iAd Platform – Business Insider

Apple iAd brings ads, cash money to third-party iPhone apps – Engadget

More discussions happening in Techmeme

(Hat off to Ryan Block of GDGT for the awesome coverage. See the full coverage of iPhone OS4 event here.)

Read more: http://www.saadkamal.com/advertising/apple-iad-mobile-advertising-platform-official/#ixzz0vpc22ctK