Wow, and I thought they couldn't get any worse than iPad with their branding. Is Jobs going George Lucas? Can no one tell him no? I'm sure the UX will be great as with most Apple things, but iAd is going to have a hard time spreading virally. If you say something out loud to someone and their response is, "What?" then move on.
No one complains about UX in ads, people complain about relevancy. And that complaint is only heard about ads that are supposed to be highly targeted. No one complains that billboards on the side of highways are not relevant to them -- mainly because the cost of the billboard is entirely on the creator of the ad, users pay (in network bandwidth and slower page load times) to have ads shown to them on web pages, so wanting to see higher relevant ads, if they have to see ads at all, makes sense.
No one says "I'd buy the product this ad is advertising, but the experience of using the ad is terrible." That doesn't even make any sense. Ads don't have "users" like software does. And ads that don't end up resulting in sales are ads you won't see long, no matter how engaging they are.
What about the various whines about unskippable pre-roll ads on dvds? That is User experience, sucky user experience, no matter how relevant the ads involved.
Not surprising, Apple can't be pleased that much of the revenue from ad-supported iPhone apps goes to Google via AdMob. I expect shortly after its introduction iAd will be the only permitted advertising mechanism in the app store.
Joking aside, I wonder if Apple will ban ad-blocking apps from the app store. I definitely don't want my mobile bandwidth bill to get artificially inflated because I was forced to download ads.
Apps that block their own ads? I'm sure Apple wouldn't give a shit. App Store apps are sandboxed, and can't fuck with each other or with the built-in apps.
Apple doesn't sell the iPhone through carriers anywhere without an unlimited data plan. They'll only be changing that with the iPad in a month or so.
For what it's worth, that bit about unlimited data plans isn't entirely true. The standard iPhone voice and data plans from Vodacom in South Africa bundle only 250Mb of data, while I'm fairly sure that Rogers in Canada and Vodafone in Australia don't sell the iPhone with unlimited data plans, at least not on all contracts.
Does anyone, and I mean anyone, intentionally click on mobile ads?
I pay attention to and click on way more web ads than average, but only when I'm "browsing" -- just scanning and reading information. I don't think I've ever intentionally clicked on an ad in any app (mail, game, whatever), mobile or not. I don't think I look at them much either, and that's horrible considering I've got ADHD.
However, ad-supported apps still work on me as trialware. I'll get a feel for the software, and if I'm going to keep using it, I want to buy a copy that doesn't waste my space.
What's really interesting in this move is that an Apple-based ad platform would simplify things a lot for mobile developers: one partner, one financial statement, one source of revenue. Every time you add an external partner (e.g. Apple, AdMob, Urbain Airship) to your app its (bureaucratic) complexity increases.
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