Much has been made of the glitches in the iAd mobile ad service that Apple rolled out on July 1. In short there are specific reasons why, of the 17 launch partners Apple named, only two - Unilever and Nissan - had iAd campaigns running for much of July (via the Wall Street Journal).
Those include the tight control Apple is keeping over the creative process which has added weeks to the process. Then there is the expense - $1 million a package - that has no doubt deterred more advertisers from signing up, at least until the results of these early adopters become clear. Apple has also worried some companies with its insistence of keeping control of the customer relationship and its stinginess with analytics information.
Compelled
Marketers, though, are forging ahead with the iAd, which delivers interactive ads in iPhone apps. One namely, is that the click through rates and other engagement metrics are much higher than compared to other online ad formats. A Nissan spokeswoman told the Journal that its iAd "has driven exceptional results to date" with the rate of users tapping on the banner five times the click-through-rate of the online campaign.
The other is that Apple, its app ecosytem and the iAd is the viable channel for marketers interested in exploring this format.
That latter point, however, is changing.
$2.2 Billion and Counting
Rivals, such as Google, are developing similar mobile ad-serving functionality. Perhaps more importantly, there is the growth of the smartphone application market - a growth that stretches far beyond Apple. According to new figures from research2guidance, the worldwide smartphone applications market grew more than $2.2 billion within the first six months of 2010.
Mobile application download numbers reached a total of 3.8 billion in only 6 months, compared to 3.1 billion in 2009. One driver behind this growth, the report finds, is that the app stores that were founded in 2009 have finally managed to increase application numbers and are growing their app business. "Apple's competitors like Nokia and BlackBerry started to leverage their global reach and increased the traffic on their app stores. This trend will continue in the next several months and years." The next wave of new app stores will be niche stores specializing in business or mobile health apps, it predicts.
