My Comments on the below:
It is very interesting that Apple have not mentioned iAD at the World Developer conference day in San Francisco yesterday as highlighted by Dan Frommer of Business Insider. Especially, as they were so keen to raise the bar in the mobile ad industry when they announced its release last year. That said the mobile ad industry is moving at such a fast rate and I no doubt Apple are fine tuning their product from the learnings they would have taken to-date.
We are seeing first hand the mobile ad-market exploding into the desk of most Marketers & Media Planners and Buyers. This is a subject that has to be on the list rather than off the list. There are dynamic shifts across regions in the type of advertisement whether it is brands, content companies or media owners all wanting to capitalise on the opportunity.
Mobile content companies that where present in the early stages are finding it hard to convert in the matured markets such as US and Western Europe. I believe this is due to user desirability and general maturity of the market. The old content subscription services are not so sought in markets with strong smartphone penetration. As the mobile web and apps that are enabled by smartphones offer content that is ‘King’. Whereas, in emerging markets like LATAM, ASIA, Indonesia with heavy feature phone penetration content is scarce and usability limited. Hence, the desire is still high for content companies to service this void.
Western society is dominated by the big Fortune 100 advertisers whether it is premium advertising with super sexy rich media and the explosion of HTML5 or more simple direct response campaigns pushing for an acquisition/sale of some sort.
We are starting to see the big brands shift some ad-spend into the emerging markets from certain sectors such as, Travel, Finance, Technology, Health and Automotive but this is still a small portion of the total ad spend in those markets that are dominated by content companies. The end user is still considered as someone with limited or no disposable income unlike its more matured Western Societies. This is changing thanks to technology and many other factors and presents a huge opportunity for M-Commerce as this will in many emerging markets leapfrog e-commerce.
This is when everything changes…
When we consider there are 3 billion people in the world that are not even connected to online and that these 3 billion people in the next five years will become connected via cheaper and still sophisticated smartphones it presents a world of opportunity and excitement. This is why I work in the most exciting and fastest growing industry of all time.
Posted By ] Dan Frommer
Remember Apple’s iAd? Apple might not, either.
A year after being shown off as a “tentpole” feature of iPhone software, Apple’s mobile advertising business didn’t earn a single mention today, as execs previewed a new version of iOS at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs even took the opportunity to trash ads.
While discussing Apple’s free, new iCloud email service, he took an apparent jab at Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and the others, which stuff ads in their free email services.
“No ads,” he boasted. ”We build products that we want for ourselves, too, and we just don’t want ads.”
That’s obviously not the same thing as if Jobs were to say “we don’t like iAds” or “iAds stink.”
But it seems to underscore the awkwardness of Apple — a product-focused hardware and software company — trying to become an advertising company. (Much more about that here.)
Maybe there just weren’t any new iAd features to show off today. Apple certainly had a lot of more interesting new stuff to show off. But there wasn’t even a “hey, look how many ads we’re delivering every day” or “wow, we have all these amazing advertisers!” message. Or anything.
Via: http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-snubs-the-iad-2011-6#ixzz1OZxRyZFl
