There’s lots of people crying about iAds. “It’s this intrusive model that Apple wants to rake money from!” But not really. Making applications is hard work (seriously - try it sometime), but people want applications for free or dirt cheap. You’ll often find a variety of free applications that implement some form of advertising so you can get high quality content with an ad once in a while. Dear consumer: You’ve set the standard on how you want to pay for applications. This is the answer, and it’s geared to help developers make some extra money so they can continue to deliver you more great applications. I truly believe this is a money tree.
Apple has generally been good to developers, and now they’re even putting chocolate on my pillow. If I can give you guys a free app that has a beautiful banner ad included (vs. an ugly ad that removes you from the app) with a paid option available that doesn’t have any ads, that would be my goal. If Apple is going to pay me to deliver content, I’m all for it, and it only gets sweeter as customers enjoy what I (and other developers) provide. TUAW explains,
“With iAds, developers get 60% of the revenue generated by the ad in their app. They can pretty easily drop them into their apps because the system is built into iOS 4.
Steve went so far as to project that Apple would have 48% of the mobile advertising market locked up by the end of this year. That’s the $60 million in commitments they’ve got so far and then some!”
And these aren’t crappy Google ads that make you cringe. These are beautiful, well designed, interactive applications that you just might be interested in. Honestly, I click a lot of Fusion Ads because they’re visually compelling – I imagine the same thing will happen with iAds.
“Quoting Steve via this morning’s liveblogs, “So let me tell you some of the brands that will be advertising with us. Nissan, Citi, Unilever, AT&T, Chanel, GE, Liberty Mutual, State Farm, Geico, Campbells, Sears, JC Penny, Target, Best Buy, Direct TV, TBS, and Disney… those are some of the brands.”
iAds isn’t evil. This isn’t some plan for Apple world domination. This is something where everyone can benefit: customers can have low cost applications, while developers can get paid fairly for the quality of their work. Advertisers get their product exposed, and Apple makes some extra revenue to poor back into innovative products. This medium of consumption is incredibly positive for everyone.
[via TUAW]
