Slash LaneA number of developers and advertising executives spoke anonymously with TechCrunch for a report that paints a grim picture for Apple's iAd business. Developers indicated that after the new year, the fill rate — or what percentage of ad inventory is actually filled with an ad — dropped from 18 percent to 6 percent.
iAds launched in the U.S. in July and got off to an initial strong start. While Apple managed to carve out a significant market share, there were some issues, as some advertisers found Apple's ad creation process too limiting. Two of the initial 17 advertisers who joined iAd opted out of the program and went to alternative networks.
While Apple made a strong initial push to secure those first iAd contracts by selling them directly to CEOs, the relationships were then "dumped into the laps of junior account managers in Apple's advertising business," author Erick Schonfeld wrote. Those employees came from Apple's $275 million acquisition of mobile advertising firm Quattro Wireless in late 2009.
Those account managers are now attempting to secure renewals from advertising partners, but their counterparts at ad agencies and brands are allegedly having a hard time securing $1-million-plus for a mobile advertising campaign with iAds. One anonymous ad executive said iAd people have been "calling a lot more and becoming very aggressive in pushing for renewals."
Other problems with the iAd network are said to be the fact that it isn't cross-platform and do not allow companies to access users on other devices and platforms, as well as the fact that Apple employs a "black box" approach that does not allow advertisers to control what applications their ads appear in.
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
AppleInsider Staff
Chip Loder
Malcolm Owen
47 Comments
Google is much more successful at apples business then apple in googles. I am not sure why, considering apple has always had good marketing.
Perhaps getting engineering is in a wierd way easier then creating ads people want to pay for or see.
Google is much more successful at apples business then apple in googles. I am not sure why, considering apple has always had good marketing.
Perhaps getting engineering is in a wierd way easier then creating ads people want to pay for or see.
Yeah selling user data is not apple's usual business
January-february is always slow in the ad business in my experience. The media agencies are currently planning their activities and budgets, therefore it's harder to close the deals.
With the impressive effect reports we have heard from the iAd platform I doubt that it'll fail.
I always thought the million dollar threshold was going to hurt them. The thing is that there is an iAd dev kit that works pretty well except that the license says that it can only be used to deliver ads through the iAds network. If developers were allowed to leverage the kit but use it inside their own apps, then advertisers could purchase ad space directly from the app publisher just like they do for TV and print media. Apple could instead offer a reporting and tracking service to advertisers and developers for a reduced revenue sharing and just bail on the creative services.
Google is much more successful at apples business then apple in googles. I am not sure why, considering apple has always had good marketing.
Perhaps getting engineering is in a wierd way easier then creating ads people want to pay for or see.
Unless you care to elaborate. If you are talking about iPhone/Android, then no, because they make nothing directly off of any Android-driven handset. Google is excellent at Google's business, which is search-driven ad revenue. Android and it's army of handsets is a stalking horse for the ad revenue. If another, better means of doing that comes along, Android will be dropped and the new thing will take it's place.
TechCrunch makes several good points about how marketing operates and the hierarchy that drives marketing can negatively impact continuing success when the decisions are being made in the trenches and not by the marketing CEOs. That made the most sense in the article. Perhaps the usual post-holiday downturn impacted a bit too, but I think Apple may not have calculated on entrenched behaviors impacting their approach - and marketing has some highly reinforced behaviors that are hard to disrupt.