Not Just Gadgets: Apple iAd Advertising Network

Most recently, Apple's presentation at the California Flint Center ended, at which the company's new products were presented. In the near future they will be discussed a lot - this happens with almost everything that the organization produces. Almost, but not always - today we’ll talk about one of Apple’s not-so-popular iAd products .

What is it

The iAd advertising platform is designed to enable developers of applications for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad to display ads in their products and earn money on it. The platform was supposed to compete with the Google AdMob ad network.

At the presentation of the new product, Steve Jobs urged developers to use iAd, because it "will help them make money."



However, the platform failed to gain a leading position in the world of mobile advertising - even despite the fact that Apple is the absolute leader in the sale of its gadgets, in the applications installed on them, ads are displayed more often through other advertising networks.

iAd is based on product purchasedApple for Quattro Wireless for $ 275 million (before that, the company tried to buy AdMob, but it was ahead of Google).

Reason for failure

Initially, the iAd platform was aimed at large advertisers, and Apple set an extremely high entry barrier - the minimum advertising campaign was $ 1 million.

In addition, the company sought to tightly control the content of advertisements. Another significant drawback of the Apple advertising platform was the lack of access to Android users, due to the closed ecosystem of the Cupertino company. As a result, the share of iAd in the US advertising market does not exceed 3%.

Changes

In the summer of 2013, Apple lowered the minimum contribution, first about $ 500 thousand, and then, after passing the marks of $ 300, $ 200 and $ 100 thousand, and to only $ 50, reorienting from large companies to independent developers. Even rumors appeared on the market that Apple would launch its own advertising exchange, but this has not yet happened.

In the future, the advertising ecosystem of the company became more open - all users with an Apple ID account got the opportunity to create iAds advertisements . Ads are created using the iAd Workbench web service. The image is clickable In addition, the iAd platform is integrated with the streaming service Apple iTunes Radio.

pros

The developer of the Colorbay application under the nickname MetaRain described his experience with iAd on his blog . Among the pluses, he noted:

• Good targeting options, including age, gender, and previous app downloads — Colorbay targeted their ads to users who recently downloaded apps from the Photo & Video and Social Networking categories.
• The results were very good - having spent $ 24.39, Colorbay developers received 966.648 impressions at CPM $ 0.03. Users “taped” 1.702 times on displayed advertisements, and downloaded the application 25 times. This means that each click cost $ 0.01, and downloading the application $ 0.98.

Not everything was so smooth - setting rather stringent targeting conditions and a budget of $ 10 per day, the developer found that there are not enough people in the iAd system to select all this money.

However, the overall performance of the advertising campaign was at a good level, as MetaRain noted:

iAd is quite a promising thing. It seems that they are moving in the right direction, so integration with this platform is worth it.

IAd may also be interested in Russian application developers by the fact that since the end of August this year the advertising platform has officially started its work in Russia - now it is possible to place ads in 16 countries included in the network