Reuters publishes an interview with Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz touching on a number of different topics, briefly including the burgeoning mobile advertising market and Apple’s role in it through its iAd program. In Bartz’s view, Apple’s demands for total control over the program will ultimately be its downfall, as advertisers eventually rebel against the non-traditional framework in favor of the greater flexibility offered by other channels.
Mobile advertising, although still a nascent market, has become the next battleground pitting Yahoo against Google and Apple.
Earlier this year Apple introduced its iAd service to create premium ads for marketers on the iPhone.
“That’s going to fall apart for them,” Bartz said about Apple’s iAd service. “Advertisers are not going to have that type of control over them. Apple wants total control over those ads.”
Apple’s iAd program went live on July 1st with only a small handful of prominent brands ready for the launch. Despite the fact that the few early adopters have been happy with the results so far, rollout of the ads has been slowed by Apple’s firm control over the entire process, including the creative and development aspects that advertisers have been accustomed to having control over themselves.
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AT&T and ‘The Switch’ Join the iAd Rotation
Monday August 23, 2010 04:16 PM EST
Written by Eric Slivka
Silicon Alley Insider provides a walkthrough of two new iAds that have just gone live, featuring Apple’s U.S. iPhone partner AT&T and “The Switch”, a new movie with Jason Bateman and Jennifer Anniston that debuted this past weekend.
The AT&T ad focuses on the carrier’s new $15-per-month Data Plus plan, carrying the tag line “Now your entire family can afford the mobile internet.” The various ad panels outline the carrier’s Data Plus ($15/200 MB) and Data Pro ($25/2 GB) plans and offer estimates and tools to help users decide which plans would be right for them given their mobile activities. The company also pushes its Wi-Fi hotspots, available to its cellular data customers free of charge.
The iAd for “The Switch” offers a variety of features, including a tool for finding nearby theaters showing the film, trailers and commercials, a photo gallery, character bios, and a humorous “quiz” to help users decide whether they are ready to be parents. The ad also features a mini-game called “Build a Baby”, which lets users assemble various combinations of hair, eyes, and mouths to create unique “baby” faces. The resulting images can be saved to the users’ Camera Roll photo folders.
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MacDailyNews reports that Apple has reached out to users of its Quattro Wireless ad platform, notifying them that it has stopped taking new campaign submissions and will be winding down operation of the service by the end of September in favor of Apple’s new iAd platform. The message comes from Andy Miller, former CEO of Quattro and currently Apple’s vice president for the iAd program.
We believe iAd is the best mobile ad network in the world, and starting next month we’re going to focus all of our resources on the iAd advertising platform. We are no longer accepting new campaigns for the Quattro Wireless Network, and we will soon begin winding down existing campaigns. As of September 30, we will support ads exclusively for the iAd Network.
Apple acquired Quattro Wireless early this year in order to bring on board talent for deploying its own iAd mobile advertising service. The iAd program went live on July 1st, and has served up strong performance for early-adopter advertisers and app developers, although rollout of ads for the program has been slowed by Apple’s tight control over the entire process. It is clear, however, that Apple is putting all of its mobile advertising emphasis on iAd, unsurprisingly necessitating the discontinuation of Quattro’s former services.
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Just a few days ago, we noted that early advertisers and developers participating in Apple’s iAd program have generally been pleased with the results so far, with advertisers finding high levels of user engagement and increased brand awareness and developers seeing solid financial returns.
The Wall Street Journal reports, however, that not everything is running so smoothly. In particular, Apple’s “tight control” over the entire process, including creation of the actual ads, has slowed the launch of offerings from a number of the program’s publicized launch partners.
Of the 17 launch partners Apple named for iAd, only Unilever PLC and Nissan Co. had iAd campaigns for much of July. Of the remaining 17, Citigroup Inc., Walt Disney Co. and J.C. Penney Co. – which tied its campaign to the back-to-school-season – have since launched iAd campaigns and other companies are planning iAd efforts.
Part of the reason some marketers are experiencing delays in getting their iAds to market is that Apple has kept tight control on the creative aspects of ad-making, something advertisers aren’t used to, according to several ad executives involved with creating iAds.
According to the report, the ad creation process is taking up to 8-10 weeks, with Apple spending up to two weeks longer than originally expected to build the actual ads, leading to the delays.
People familiar with the matter said Apple underestimated how tough the new business would be and is still learning the best tactics for dealing with ad agencies. At the same time, ad agencies are struggling to keep pace with new ad technologies.
With Apple handling the production of the ad unit, agencies don’t necessarily know what it is capable of or how to use the technology, one ad executive said. The iAd is designed in HTML5 technology, and Apple has yet to distribute a “developer kit” to agencies so they can understand how it works.
In order to fill the void in the iAd program created by the delayed launches of the big-name advertisers, Apple has rolled out an “iAd for Developers” program that allows App Store developers to advertise their applications within other apps and provides users with the ability to download the advertised apps directly from the iAd without leaving the application that is running. Today’s report claims that Apple is charging developers 25 cents every time a user taps on a banner ad for their application, a significant discount from the $2-per-tap rate charged to deep-pocketed advertisers for their more interactive ads.
While the iAd roll-out seems to have had mixed results so far with limited participation but strong results from those who have managed to make their ads available, Apple is no doubt still in the early stages of learning how to become a mobile advertising company. But with Citibank, Disney, and J.C. Penney beginning to roll out their initial ads for the program, we may soon begin to see more variety in ads and additional companies making entries into the program.
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