The iAds buy-in has been hacked and slashed again. This time the price has been set at $100,000, down from the previous $300,000, which is down from the previous $500,000, which is down from the original $1,000,000 that was the required fee for an iAd campaign.
According to Ad Age, Apple is beginning to completely restructure its iAd framework. Apple will now be offering developers 70 percent of ad revenue from iAds, up from their previous 60 percent cut. Additionally, Apple will now only be charging advertisers a CPM rate instead of both a CPM rate and a CTR rate. In brief, customers will no longer be charged a per 1000 impression rate as well as a rate for each click-through.
It’s not unheard of to see a place holder where an iAd should be within an iAd based iOS application. If Apple took the Google approach and let anyone purchase advertising space, while still maintaining high standards for the ad, a lot of people, including us, would be buying up advertisements. Someone like us would have a lot to gain by marketing to the iOS masses. We get that Apple only wants to advertise for large, established companies, but we can’t help feeling like it’s a bit of a missed opportunity. If a company like Facebook can vet advertisements, surely Apple could do the same.
iAds kind of feels a little like iTunes LP, and iTunes Extras. They’re fantastic ideas, and bring a lot to the table for consumers, but it seems like very few studios actually wanted to invest the money to create enhanced albums and videos for iTunes. The same can be said for iAds. A lot of iAd customers have publicly complained about the lead-in time required to get an iAd off the ground. The cost-benefit just wasn’t what companies were expecting when they doled out millions of dollars for a campaign.
