iAds the latest Apple launchfiled in: blog archive
written by David on April 16th, 2010 |
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Hot on the heals of the iPad we now have iAds which have been developed in conjunction with Apple’s new iPhone 4.0 operating system. “What is an iAd?” I hear you cry!
Well Apple are certainly a company who look to find areas where they believe there is a weakness in the market, either for products or sometimes just in the way things are done and they and in particular Steve Jobs believe that advertising on mobile phones is a market which has an opportunity for them to develop and dominate. In a recent demonstration in San Francisco, Steve Jobs (Apple’s CEO) showed how interactive, advertising-led content could be viewed within an app. He showed how he could browse a page of entertainment news headlines and then click on a banner ad for Toy Story 3 that sat at the bottom of the page. Clicking on the advert then pulled up “an app within an app” which is in effect specially created content that encourages users to explore character art, movie clips, competitions and games, and then allowed them to view a map of local cinemas showing the movie, with show times and prices.
As I have written before, the power of apps is that they can push data rather than being pulled as in a normal web experience and therefore the opportunities are far greater to engage with customers in a way that they have in effect already given permission for you to communicate. Opportunities are not just limited to pure consumer advertising either as there are also substantial chances for cross selling and building awareness in the reader’s subconcious and this applies just as much in the B2B arena as well, especially where an app is useful and therefore in constant use.
Emotion and interactivity, said Jobs, would set the iAd platform apart from its competitors. He believes the service will combine the “emotion of television ads” with the “interactivity of web ads” and as users return to their app this can be changed by the advertiser as many times as required, almost like a rolling banner ad on a web site.
This is a message to the advertising industry that mobile ads are different from standard online display and rich media offerings and that if planned and used properly can be far more valuable to a brand. The coding will be as for current apps and there does not seem to be any opportunity for Adobe Flash to be introduced but with over 50 million iPhones in use and with the imminent population growth of iPads plus the data Apple holds from iTunes and app stores it is clear that it will have information at its fingertips to help advertisers and brands target their audiences cost effectively.
Changes over the last few years have been driven by the clever thinking and willingness to push boundaries by Apple, so don’t bet against this, but rather get yourself ready and in a position to take advantage when this new software is launched in the summer, so give us a call.
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