Mikey Campbell
In a notice to developers on Tuesday, Apple announced availability of new iAd options including pre-roll video and full-screen interstitial banner ads for iOS apps, as well as support for Russia and Switzerland.
Word of the iAd expansion first came in March, while a developer document posted to Apple's Developer Portal in June (PDF link) outlined integration of pre-roll and full-screen banner ads.
As noted by Apple, the new options are now available for developers and advertisers, opening up new avenues of revenue for so-called "freemium" apps.
Now you can deliver highly engaging ads from leading brands. Optimized for your app, pre-roll video and full-screen interstitial banner ads are now available on iOS.
Full-screen interstitial banners allow a single ad to be displayed as a full page of content either as a static element or a transitional screen sandwiched between two app sections. Due to their prominent placement, interstitials command a higher price than the usual banner-type iAds seen at the top or bottom of ad-supported apps.
Pre-roll video spots also garner higher ad rates than header/footer and MREC (medium rectangle) banners. With Apple's version, video ads automatically appear for users in 16:9 or 4:3 aspect ratios and come in 15, 30 or 60-second blocks.
In addition to the ad buffs, Apple also announced iAd availability in Russia and Switzerland and in doing so expanded the iAd App Network to a total of 16 regions.
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13 Comments
There has to be a better way to get revenue than disgusting banner ads OR advertising disguised as content...
There has to be a better way to get revenue than disgusting banner ads OR advertising disguised as content...
Both!
(Except you probably mean better for the user.) The 'better' way appears to be freemium time-grind games (which usually still have ads, so technically the answer is 'all three!').
Either expensive high-quality apps are harder to sell to the mobile crowd (yep) or there's less risk for developers in putting out ad (and/or smurf-berry) supported apps so they lean that way.
I think the real issue in the end is discoverability and transparency for the App Store itself. Adding 'contains in-app purchases' was a tiny step in the right direction, but what we really need is some sort of semi-organic tagging so that you can easily see if a game is a time-grind or not, and whether and how quickly progress grinds to a halt w/o paying real $. We need to know if the in-app purchases offered are pay-to-play-esque or if it's stuff like additional levels (things of reasonable real value). I'm using games for my example here, but as far as iAd goes, it'd be nice to know from such a transparency layer if apps' use of ads is in the normal range, or if they're too frequent or too annoying - and whether having ads is worth what you get in return. It'd also be nice to know if paid apps also include ads.
Ahh - the walled garden. So clean. So zen-like. So frustratingly slow to become useful in certain respects.
I just hope that with the App Store Apple is doing their usual thing of silently working on 'getting it right' rather than publicly throwing spaghetti at the wall all the time.
"Interstitial?" "Pre-roll?"? Sounds a whole lot like TV ads to me. The first time I saw that initial Nissan Leaf iAd, I thought "That looks like a TV ad." I'm convinced iAd was designed for TV from day one.
Screenshot for the new Apple advertisements about to begin running in the Middle-East: [IMG]http://forums.appleinsider.com/content/type/61/id/47657/width/400/height/800[/IMG]