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Apple is shutting down iAd 'App Network' June 30th (updated)
Earlier this week, Buzzfeed reported that Apple was going to start phasing out its iAd advertising network -- rather than having an ad sales business, the company was rumored to automate things and let developers submit ads directly. While that still could happen, language in a message posted today from Apple to developers is more definitive: iAd is shutting down on June 30th. Update: Correction, the iAd program as a whole is not shutting down. What is happening, is that the similarly-named iAd App Network, which allows developers to advertise their own apps through iAds, is going away.
Apple is taking a new hands-off approach to iAd
Apple's big foray into advertising isn't working out as expected. Six years after launching iAd, the company will soon take a step back from selling ads on its own platform, and will instead open things up directly to publishers, BuzzFeed reports. Consequently, Apple will also phase out its iAd sales force. "It's just not something we're very good at," one source told the site. The move is a bit surprising -- iAd was once heralded as a potential revolution in advertising (Nielsen once called it more effective than TV commercials) -- but it's also a sign that Apple is finally refocusing on its own strengths.
Apple makes its mobile ads bigger, longer, more in your face
Next time you're playing a favorite game on your iPhone and iPad, a huge ad -- or worse, a minute-long video roll -- might take over the screen. iAd platform's full-screen interstitial banner and pre-roll video ads, which were first announced earlier this year, are now available to developers. The full-screen ads appear as transitional screens, say, whenever you reach the end of a game level, while the video ads come in 15, 30 and 60-second variants. These are already available on other ad platforms, of course, but iAds were typically more unobtrusive, just banners that you can click on to launch advertisers' websites. As you'd expect, these new options will cost devs a lot more money. But if Apple does unleash an iPhone with a much larger screen (possibly this September), then these ads might just be worth their cash.
Free shipping from Apple's online store and more news for May 23, 2014
Friday is typically a "slow news day," but we've got four stories this week. Apple's online store offers free shipping for a time, iAd Producer has gotten an update, Apple agrees to a large settlement in court and hackers claim to have around a pretty nasty iCloud exploit. Onward! Apple's online store is offering free shipping through May 29. Perhaps they're prepping for the Father's Day shopping season or just looking for a pre-summer boost. If it's the former, here's a note to my family: a Mac Pro will look great on dad's desk. Apple has released iAd Producer 4.2. The updated software allows for the creation of full-screen banner ads for the iPhone and an option to upload Producer projects to iAd workbench. Minor changes include folder reorganization in the Assets sidebar and iAd Workbench support for existing iAd Producer projects. Apple, others agree to US$325M settlement in Silicon Valley wage fixing case. The group reached a preliminary agreement about a month ago, and now everyone has agreed upon a settlement of $325 million. Judge Lucy Koh -- a name probably familiar to many of you -- must still approve the settlement. Hackers claim to have exploit for iCloud, specifically affecting Activation Lock (Google translate). A group going by the name "Team DoulCi" has demonstrated the problem. It seems that iTunes on Windows does not verify security certificates properly, allowing hackers to execute a "man-in-the-middle" attack and intercept a user's Apple ID creds. The vulnerability can also let attackers into iDevices that have been rendered unusable by Activation Lock.
Apple execs rewarded with stock bonuses worth $12 million each, and other news for March 6, 2014
Apple has awarded a total of 30,000 shares totaling US$12.1 million to six company executives, according to MacRumors. The news came from required filings with the SEC. As MacRumors explains: The shares appear to have been awarded as part of the executives' 2014 compensation package. Apple Senior Vice Presidents Eddy Cue, Craig Federighi, Dan Riccio, Phil Schiller, Bruce Sewell, and Jeffrey Williams all received equal bonus awards, with shares granted thusly: - 22,738 RSUs with one-third of the units scheduled to vest into full shares of Apple stock on April 1 of 2016, 2017 and 2018. - 6,626 RSUs scheduled to vest on October 1, 2015, with that number subject to adjustment based on Apple's total shareholder return. - 6,416 RSUs scheduled to vest on October 1, 2016 with the same adjustments as the 2015 award. In other news: AdAge says Apple is going to roll out full-screen video ads later this year as part of its iAd program. Azoi has released the Wello iPhone case, allowing users to track heath metrics like blood pressure, heart rate, and temperature. Australia is angry at Apple after uncovering a profit-shifting scheme that saw the company move $9 billion in funds to Ireland.
Daily Update for December 10, 2013
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen. Subscribe via RSS
Apple expands iAd workbench to include nine new countries
Apple this past June rolled out iAd Workbench, a service that enables developers to build targeted ad campaigns for their apps while also providing them with tools to easily create ads. Apple describes the service thusly: Reach millions of iOS users with iAd Workbench, the simplest way to create, manage and optimize ad campaigns to promote your apps. Get started in just a few simple steps. Select the right audience for your app and set the best price for your business goals. Build customized banners in minutes. Track your campaign performance and drive downloads at the cost that works for you. From start to finish, iAd Workbench puts you in control. MacNN is now reporting that iAd Workbench has been rolled out to nine additional countries, including Canada, France, Spain, Germany, the UK, Italy, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. Once developers have an ad ready to go, they can easily tweak the budget for particular ad campaigns and can even choose to dole out funds on either a cost-per-click or cost-per-acquisition basis.
Apple posts job listings for iAd team positions in advance of iTunes Radio
With the impending release of iTunes Radio, Apple is preparing for its entry into the world of streaming music by expanding its iAd division. Apple currently has three positions open on their official jobs board for the iAd division, all in the design field. And those are just the jobs on their official job board. As reported by Ad Age earlier today, Apple has posted a plethora of openings on LinkedIn, looking for professionals in a wide range of fields. Business analysts, producers, build and release engineers, program managers, creative design managers and account coordinators are all being sought in the 31 current job listings for iAd Apple over at LinkedIn. Apple has already lined up some major advertisers for the iTunes Radio launch, including McDonald's, Pepsi, Nissan and Proctor & Gamble. With a minimum buy-in of around US$1 million for each advertiser, the company has a lot riding on making sure its advertising is exactly what it needs to be. Head over to the jobs board or LinkedIn for the openings that are currently available.
Apple releases iAd Workbench for campaign management
Apple has launched iAd Workbench, a new service that allows developers of all sizes to build ad campaigns to reach their target demographics. iAd started as a massively expensive service that was priced out of the reach of many developers, with the minimum for an advertising contract being set at US$500,000 in 2011. The minimum then shrank to $300,000 in July of 2011, and then again to $100,000 in February of 2012. Now with iAd Workbench the minimum to spend on campaigns starts at $50. Apple is obviously rethinking the scope of which developers it wants advertising. iAd Workbench provides template ads to make ad creation quick and easy for developers. More customization is available for people who want it, but the system is designed for quick generation. Once your ad is created, the service offers targeting options that allow you to pinpoint users by location, previous downloads from iTunes or specific kinds of apps. Want to target people who search for productivity and game apps? They're just a few clicks away. The customization features allow you to set ad prices based on cost-per-click (CPC) and cost-per-acquisition (CPA) goals, along with setting daily spending limits and budgets for your campaign. All of your ads can be managed and checked via a main Dashboard that lets you know your CPC, CPA, installs and total spent. The service also comes with customizable analytics for tracking your apps progress from month to month. With dramatically lowered prices Apple has just taken away a major barrier of entry for indie developers to advertise their apps. It will be interesting to see how this change will effect ads for iOS in the future. Here's a video about the new service. iAd Workbench is available now.
Bloomberg details Apple's rumored radio service, associated iAd revamp
If you believe the rumor mill, Apple is planning to announce its long-rumored streaming music service as a feature alongside the iOS 7 update during WWDC next week, and now Bloomberg has more details on how it might work. According to the report, the entire thing will be free and ad-supported, Pandora-style. It's expected to include similar features for tracking user's tastes and serving up similar songs, with tight integration to iTunes so they can buy a track if they'd like to keep it. Where a bigger change may be however is on the backend, in how Apple deals with its advertising business. A shift in iAd directed by Eddy Cue and recent hire Todd Teresi is cutting some fees out, giving advertises more flexibility in how they buy placements, and will share radio ad revenue with music labels.
AppGratis document shows disconnect between statement and promotion
Today's edition of "How the AppGratis Turns" finds Business Insider reporting on a "leaked document" showing that the company supplies developers with estimates on where their app will land in the App Store rankings based on how much they're willing to spend. This contradicts what AppGratis CEO Simon Dawlat stated yesterday to TUAW sister site TechCrunch. In Dawlat's statement, he said that "We've never been in the business of gaming the top charts or anything." Business Insider contacted Dawlat about a chart they received showing that an approximately US$100,000 buy with AppGratis would place an app in the top five in the US App Store; something that BI considers to be at odds with what Dawlat said. Dawlat took a look at the chart published by BI and replied that "Today, mobile-media buying is this simple equation where the biggest industry players will acquire a certain number of installs through guys like AppGratis, Facebook Mobile Ads, Apple's iAd and all the other guys in order to reach their ranking objective." In other words, what Dawlat thinks is business as usual in the mobile app-marketing world is what Business Insider and Apple appear to see as disrupting the system. AllThingsD featured a guest post by former OMGPOP CEO Dan Porter last week in which he said that App Store rankings are so important to Apple that the company strives to keep them fair and democratic. Apps like AppGratis are seen as artificially inflating rankings based on how much a developer is willing to pay, totally at odds with Apple's goals and probably what lead to the current AppGratis ban. Well-known iOS developer David Barnard of App Cubby (@drbarnard) tweeted earlier today that "I don't get why BI and people linking to it make that chart out to be a bad thing or inconsistent with statements" made by Dawlat. Barnard noted that "many developers buy ads on launch day to help get that traction" in the App Store, essentially gaming the App Store rankings as well. Ads in the Facebook iOS app highlight a variety of apps that are for sale in the App Store. Will Facebook eventually face the wrath of Apple's iOS developer guidelines? Guideline 2.25 states that, "Apps that display apps other than your own for purchase or promotion in a manner similar to or confusing with the App Store will be rejected." How Apple interprets and applies that guideline to apps other than AppGratis that are also used to promote apps needs to be clarified quickly. For further details on this continuing story, a look at the previous posts about AppGratis is a good way to get some background.
Former Apple iAd VP Andy Miller to be President and COO of Leap Motion
Former head of Apple's iAd program Andy Miller recently left the company to join a firm called Highland Capital, but now he's taking another leap into the COO role of a company called Leap Motion. Leap Motion is currently working on a new device designed to make motion controlled gestures easy across multiple platforms, and Miller will be helping them try to release that product commercially. The move over to Leap Motion isn't too much of a "leap," actually (sorry about that one) -- Highland Capital has backed Leap Motion previously, and in his position there, Miller reportedly worked closely with his new employer. All of this just shows that iAd's legacy is carrying farther and farther. Given how the actual business at iAd is going lately, the service's biggest consequence may just be that it found its former executives some excellent followup jobs.
Leap Motion taps former Apple iAd VP Andy Miller to be President and COO
Apple's former iAd VP (and Quattro co-founder) Andy Miller only just took a job as a general partner at Highland Capital last year after leaving the gang in Cupertino, but he's now already moving on to another fairly high profile gig. Leap Motion has announced today that Miller will become its new President and CEO COO, placing him in a central role at a company that's facing the rather difficult task of actually delivering the goods after wowing most everyone with its new gesture control technology. As Fortune notes, however, the move doesn't come as a complete surprise. Highland Capital is backing Leap, and Miller himself has reportedly been spending about 80 percent of his time on the company over the past few months. In a statement, Miller said that he's "been fortunate to work with some of the most influential figures and companies in the technology industry, and I'm as excited about the Leap as I've ever been about a technology," adding that the "potential for the Leap is limitless, as it is going to fundamentally change the way we interact with so many devices in our lives." Update: Leap Motion has reached out and informed us that Miller will be President and COO, reporting to current CEO and co-founder Michael Buckwald. The official press release can be found after the break.
Former iAd executive Mike Owen moves to AdColony
Mike Owen, who worked at Apple on iAd, has left the company to join the mobile video ad network AdColony. Owen was a senior manager in the New York office for iAd, but is now one of three recent high-profile hires at AdColony. He's also one of a few big exits from Apple's iAd program, the others being former VP Andy Miller, and Larry Albright, both former Quattro executives who joined Apple when that company was acquired. Apple's iAd service has been having some trouble. The company is trying to provide premium ads to developers for their iOS apps, but high prices and low clickthroughs have made the business slow. That doesn't mean iAd is done, however. The company has also made a few big hires recently, and with Apple's cash reserves, iAd's got plenty of room to breathe as it finds both its audience and more clients.
Apple to increase developer iAd revenue to 70%
In an effort to entice developers to use its iAd service, Apple recently announced that developers will now get a 70 percent cut of iAd revenue, says a report in AppleInsider. This is a ten percent increase from the previous terms which offered 60 percent. These new terms were included in a recent statement on Apple's developer center.
Apple reduces iAd pricing, revenue sharing
Apple is reportedly cutting the minimum cost of its iAd service again. According to Ad Age, the threshold for advertisers to acquire the iAd service has dropped from US$500,000 to just $100,000. Furthermore, Apple will reduce revenue sharing by no longer charging advertisers when users click on an ad, as has been the case since iAd launched. Apple's iAd service has not seen the greatest of success. Having launched in 2010, Apple originally charged $1,000,000 for an ad campaign, but many of its initial clients abandoned iAd for services like AdMob, Greystripe, and Millenial Media who operate on multiple platforms. Apple then reduced iAd's minimum rate to $500,000 per campaign. And in July, 2011, Apple offered further incentives by lowering the cost to $300,000 under certain circumstances. At the beginning of this year, Apple brought in former Adobe VP, Todd Teresi, to reinvigorate the service. The new price point seems to be the first step in getting iAd back on track.
Apple brings in former Adobe VP to help out iAd
Apple's iAd service hasn't been as successful as the company hoped. While Apple has been able to keep iAd "premium" by keeping up ad costs and only bringing in high profile clients interested in putting out high quality advertisements, it hasn't actually made much money with the service, either for itself or developers who are trying run the ads. Hopefully that will change now that Apple is bringing in a former Adobe VP named Todd Teresi to reinvigorate the iAd service and turn it back into the premiere ad and money generator that Steve Jobs hoped it would be. Teresi formerly oversaw Adobe's media solutions division, and he may either tweak the system so it's a little more appetizing for advertisers or bring more and bigger accounts on board so these ads can be served to developers. As for the developers we've talked to, they're more than happy to keep serving iAds as long as they can also serve ads from other services. Competing ad services may not pay as much to developers, but at least they pay something -- many iAds never get shown simply because advertisers aren't willing to pay for them. Hopefully Teresi can fix that and get iAd back up to where Jobs originally wanted it to be.
Adobe's Todd Teresi to lead Apple's iAd unit, fully purge himself of Flash reliance
It had to happen at some point, right? Adobe and Apple -- two names in a similar field -- would inevitably end up hiring someone that worked at the other firm in a past life, and unsurprisingly, the world is up in arms about an acquisition that would go unreported if not for the past drama between the two outfits. As the story goes, Todd Teresi (formerly of Adobe) has been hired to be the new chief of Apple's iAd mobile advertising division, but since the hire hasn't been officially confirmed, it's all based on "sources familiar with the matter." Interestingly, Bloomberg BusinessWeek asserts that the iAd team has been "cutting prices to keep customers from jumping ship to rivals, including Google," noting that the dominance seen in the tablet market isn't exactly translating on the advertising side. Something tells us Apple's got a few bills to lose while experimenting, though.
Apple's mobile ad head Andy Miller leaves for Highland Capital
Andy Miller, Mobile Advertising VP and Former Quattro Wireless CEO, is reportedly leaving Apple to join Highland Capital. Highland Capital is a Boston venture capital firm that previously funded ad company Quattro Wireless. Quattro was scooped up by Apple in an early 2010 acquisition. The ad platform was eventually shuttered when Apple decided to focus its efforts on iAd. The departure reflects poorly on iAd which has been slumping. After a launch filled with enthusiasm, the mobile advertising platform has not lived up to performance expectations. To improve adoption, Apple has sliced the price on its iAd campaign by as much as 70%. Apple was initially charging clients US$1 million but those prices may have dropped to as little as $300,000. Even at that reduced price, Apple still has to compete with less expensive alternatives like AdMob and Millennial Media.
Apple cuts iAd buy-in fees
Since Apple announced the iAd mobile advertising service last year, the success of the service has been in question. Now Bloomberg is reporting that Apple is cutting rates for iAds by as much as 70% to attract marquee clients. As noted in today's post, Apple was initially charging clients US$1 million or more for an ad campaign that ran only in iOS apps that were designed to display the ads. Many of the initial clients, such as J.C. Penney and Citigroup, have abandoned iAd and are now spending their advertising dollars with services like AdMob, Greystripe, and Millenial Media that run on a variety of platforms. As a result, Apple is apparently dropping the cost of ad packages down to as little as $300,000 when buying multiple campaigns to attract new advertisers and retain existing ones. This strategy appears to be working for the company, as Apple notes that they'll be adding about 50 new iAd campaigns within the next few months. Still, for many advertisers and advertising companies, there's not much of a value proposition with iAd. Rob Norman, CEO of ad agency GroupM North America, noted that despite the sleek design of iAd, companies must account for the cost. He's quoted by Bloomberg as saying "We'd all like to stay at the Four Seasons, but not if it costs $150,000 a night."
