iAd men
UK business paper the FT is reporting that Apple will finally launch its iAd mobile advertising network in Europe this week, having unveiled it back in April.
The FT piece says Apple hasn't found moving into the mobile advertising market easy, despite its acquisition of Quattro at the start of the year. It spoke to a few un-named ad execs who said Apple is expensive and difficult to work with in advertising, and that Apple is still learning how to be a media company.
The ultimate point of the mobile Internet land-grab is to control as large a proportion of its audience as possible. But that's only useful if you can make money out of them. Apple traditionally makes money out of selling desirable products, but with the launch of iTunes and the Apple App store it has increasingly been moving into the e-tail and service provision game.
Apple wants to exploit the close and essentially captive market it has in the form of the iOS (iPod, iPhone and iPad) ecosystem. What it can offer advertisers is exclusive access to this massive install-base, but it still has to work out what this is worth to them. The impression we get is that Apple might be overdoing the arrogance a tad in a market it has no pedigree in.
The market leader is, of course, Google. At its core Google is an ad sales company and it out-bid apple for the market-leading mobile ad network - AdMob - a year ago. Furthermore, the success of Android means there is a massive mobile advertising network for companies looking to exploit that medium but finding Apple a bit too rich for their blood.
Apple announced the launch of iAd in Japan last week, so it's clearly ramping-up the global roll-out of its mobile advertising network. It's difficult to bet against Apple these days, but it's clearly got its work cut out if it wants to replicate its success in devices and e-tail with iAd.
