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Are Apple's iAds in trouble?
I probably could have told you this one based on the anecdotal data I've heard from developers lately, but "insiders" have told MobileCrunch that Apple's iAd service isn't doing quite as well as Apple had hoped. The fill rate -- which refers to actual ad space that's filled with a paid ad -- has dropped from 18 percent to 6 percent according to the rumors, which means that even though Apple has developers ready to show ads, it's having trouble actually finding advertisers to pay for them. As MobileCrunch notes, even if this is true, there could be a few reasons for this, from a bad economy to just a bad seasonal trend (that could pick back up as soon as a few months from now). But more likely, it seems, is that Apple just hasn't sold iAds well to advertisers. iAds, as Steve Jobs told us when they were first announced, are a premium product -- they are interactive, well-designed, and of course, the cost is premium as well. But advertisers may not be entirely sold on the power of mobile advertising quite yet, so Apple is likely having trouble finding advertisers both willing to take the risk and big enough to afford it. The silver lining on this so far is that despite having trouble selling the ads, everything we've heard so far is that the ads do pay off. Not only do they increase brand engagement, but they reach solid customers in exactly the right ways. Still, if Apple can't get advertisers to sign on the dotted line in the first place, it won't have any of those success stories to talk about.
AdLib: Apple's secret web app weapon
MobileCrunch noticed something interesting about the iPad User Guide hidden in the iPad Safari's bookmarks. It's a web app, but it doesn't feel like a web app -- the views scroll independently and smoothly, "clicking" is exact, and the whole thing runs much more like a native iPad app than anything web app developers have been able to put together yet. Why? Apple's got a secret -- Done21 is calling it "AdLib," after a file found somewhere in the source code, and apparently it's a library that connects UIKit to HTML, CSS, and Javascript. It's a go-between framework that has no documentation in the code at all, and uses practically unlabeled variables. In other words, Apple is putting their own magic into web apps, and while the code is there to see, they aren't interested in sharing. At this point, it's not much more than a novelty -- Apple obviously is depending on Xcode and the iPhone OS SDK for developing iPad and iPhone applications, and there's no need for them to share the code magic that's making this happen. But it's interesting when you think of the original emphasis that Apple placed on web apps way back in the early iPhone days. If all of those web apps we had were as well-coded and responsive as this -- in other words, if they'd actually had ties into the UI -- then maybe web apps would have been just enough.
Five things to bring back from the iPad
MobileCrunch has an interesting post up about five things the iPad has and does that Apple would do well to bring back to those of us using the iPhone. I think we'll see more of these as we go along (especially as, you know, some of us actually get to touch and use the device), but this list is a good start. Bluetooth keyboard support is something that only jailbreakers could do on the iPhone, but it shows up day one on the iPad. The iPad, according to those checking out the SDK code, will also be able to share files with the desktop, and different apps on the iPad will even be able to identify themselves as owners for certain filetypes, which is another cool trick that Apple should teach the old iPhone dog. And of course, that processor -- we can probably expect to see a smaller version of it in a future variation of the iPhone sooner or later, since Apple is always fighting to get battery life and speed to the max. Of course, the iPad and the iPhone are two different devices, and Apple will want to keep some things separate -- as we've heard already, there are certain interface guidelines for the iPad that the iPhone will never use. But especially if we see the expected update to the iPhone later this year, it's a good guess that we'll also see some of the iPad's more reusable features find their way to the "iPad mini."
