You need to opt-in for iAds – either as a marketer or a consumer of ads. At least if you want to stay abreast of how we’ll be building brands and businesses in the coming years.
As a consumer, it has always been trendy to shun “annoying” ads, but if you want to stay in the game on how marketing will evolve, consuming innovative ad solutions is a must. As Silicon Valley legend Regis McKenna once said – marketing is everything (“Marketing Is Everything,” Harvard Business Review, 1991).
Apple gets a lot of credit for innovation in hardware and software, but with iAds they just might be on the cutting edge of advertising innovation, too. Not just because they can deliver the ads across their network and through their iPhones and iPads, but because they are taking a run at highly targeted, mobile, informative and entertaining ads that can capture the imagination of creative advertisers and consumers alike.
The ads launched this past week on iPhones and are coming soon to iPads. Early advertisers are experimenting with the rich media platform that integrates sight, sound and motion to blur the lines between ads, entertainment, information, applications and more. In addition, Apple’s iAd Network is offering targeting criteria including:
- Demographics
- Application preferences
- Music passions
- Movie genre interests
- Television genre interests
- Location!!
Though many offer similar targeting criteria, the combination of Apple’s network of valued customers, its devices and “location” are what really sets iAds apart. Others extending the boundary of marketing’s frontier to leverage location-aware technologies include foursquare, Yelp, Gowalla, Medialets, Google and, soon, Facebook, but Apple is now out of the gates with big advertisers in tow (AT&T, Best Buy, Campbell Soup Company, Chanel, Citi, DirecTV, GEICO, GE, JCPenney, Liberty Mutual Group, Nissan, Sears, State Farm, Target, Turner Broadcasting System, Unilever and The Walt Disney Studios – see June 7 press release for more). Some are even locking up categories with exclusives in order to align their brands with Apple’s iconic brand (Advertising Age – June 28).
In short, the platform combines the emotion of TV (video), the targeting and call-to-action of direct marketing (click through and purchase) and the intelligence of Apple’s products (their sensors can detect and deploy interactivity via motion, such as shaking the iPhone) into a new platform for advertising. The best of these ads will essentially be compelling apps (see SFGate – San Francisco Chronicle site – story and screen shots).
Combined with a consumer’s explicit direction on what they’re interested in seeing via opt-in, like new products or promotions from specific brands, the iAd platform offers advertisers the ability to finally realize the full promise of mobile advertising in scale for the first time.
Even as others provide ad solutions across platforms (Apple, Android, etc.), go ahead… opt-in for iAds. It might just put you in front as we push toward the marketing frontier.
