ChasNote

One thing that’s made me a fan of Apple’s iAds approach is its focus on building a mobile advertising experience for brands wanting *create* demand in mobile environments, rather than a platform that allows retailers and direct-response marketers harvest demand that was created elsewhere (the Google approach). As mobile advertising matures, brand advertising and DR advertising will both be elements of the winning model. But in these early days, as the the big players — namely Apple and Google — are establishing their ad products and their reputations, I’m wondering if it’s a good move for Apple to open the floodgates to mobile banners from app developers pitching you on their $0.99 downloadable products. When advertisers optimize for click-through and conversion-to-immediate-sale, the banners tend to favor jarring colors and annoying tactics to fool us into clicking — not beautiful ads that enhance the experience, like Superbowl commercials that are more fun to watch than the game. According to the Business Insider,

“the new iAd for Developers program is Apple’s way of getting more (albeit cheaper) ads in its system to fill its inventory glut, while also moving more app downloads through its App Store, and helping the developers who run its ads in their apps make a little more money. A potential win-win-win, if it works out.”

Cheaper ads to fill an inventory glut? That doesn’t sound like the formula that’s made Apple successful elsewhere.

In the inaugural post at his eponymous blog, my colleague Bob Buch suggests Apple’s vertically-integrated approach to business and not-integrated-enough approach to mobile advertising may limit its initial success.

“After launching DiggAds, I’ve become convinced that the future of advertising will be to integrate ads into the user experience of the site. This doesn’t mean just sticking them in the middle of the page, it means including the functionality of the site within the ad itself — essentially, transforming ads into content. Examples of this include DiggAds, Facebook’s social ads, Twitter’s new Promoted Tweets product, and of course, Google AdWords. I was disappointed that Apple did not follow this model.”

Amen.

Check out the full post.

More thoughts on the battle between Apple and Google for mobile advertising dominance.

Interesting stats from the latest Kaiser Family Foundation study of media consumption among young people (via Business Insider):

Young people spend more time consuming media on their cellphones than talking into them.

They’re watching 38 more minutes per day of TV content in 2009 versus 2004, but 25 minutes less (per day) of it is live on an actual TV.

Reading books is up almost 20% (21 minutes to 25 minutes per day) since 1999. But magazine and newspaper reading are down 40% and 57%, respectively, to 9 minutes and 3 minutes per day. Time spent reading anything on paper (38 minutes) is dwarfed by time spent watching TV content (4 hours 29 minutes) or time in front of a computer (1 hour 29 minutes).

Back in November, the NY Times reported that Apple filed a patent for un-skip-able ads for iPhones and iPods. Speculation at the time by ChasNote reader RolfSF:

“methinks this is geared more toward some of the ad-supported software models, perhaps giving some ‘free’ iphone apps a means to be free for a price.”

RolfSF was listening in on Apple’s earnings call earlier today and heard something that confirms his speculation: Peter Oppenheimer said the company had acquired Quattro to “offer developers a seamless way to make more money” in their apps, particularly free apps.

You have to wonder if Apple plans to staff an ad sales team.

From Ad Age:

“The cost of getting individual hand-held users to respond to a recent mobile ad campaign ranged from 67 cents to $85 dollars each, according to Michael Collins, CEO of the Joule mobile marketing agency. ….he cited the example of wild cost variations to emphasize the barriers of complexity and inconsistency that continue to hobble to growth of the mobile ad industry.”