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Facebook's new mobile ad network goes into beta, serves advertisements on third party sites and apps
Facebook already sports advertisements baked into its own website and mobile apps, and now it'll begin serving ads on other handset-optimized websites and smartphone applications. TechCrunch reports that the firm has begun testing a new ad network that leverages user data to display hyper-relevant ads on third party turf. Instead of relying on vanilla tracking cookies to gain insight into visitor interests, the platform accesses information including age, gender, likes, location, which apps friends have used and other data points when users are logged into a site or application with Facebook credentials. Zuckerberg and Co.'s solution lets advertisers bid on certain demographics and uses existing networks such as iAds and AdMob to serve appropriate ads based on anonymous ID's tied to Facebook accounts. For now, Menlo Park's new program is limited to the all-important mobile market, but don't be surprised if the service finds its way to the desktop.
Steve Jobs: 'we tried to buy a company called AdMob'
We'd previously heard rumors that Quattro Wireless was Apple's consolation prize after a deal with bigger mobile advertising rival AdMob fell through, and Steve Jobs confirmed it on no uncertain terms at the Q&A session following today's iPhone OS 4.0 event: "we tried to buy a company called AdMob... but Google snatched it away." Indeed they did, though that deal hasn't yet been approved by the Federal Trade Commission while Apple's already up, up and away with its iAd solution, so it seems like everything shook out for the best -- if you're an iPhone developer, anyway.
Apple iAd brings ads, cash money to third-party iPhone apps
If you were wondering exactly what Apple had in mind with its acquisition of Quattro Wireless a few months back, the picture gets a little clearer today with the announcement of the iAd mobile ad platform alongside iPhone OS 4.0 today with the company saying that iPhone devs have a billion "ad opportunities" per day. The idea is to keep users in the apps to see interactive, "emotional" ad content as often as once every three minutes -- not to "yank" them out, as Steve puts it -- while developers are rewarded with a 60 percent cut of the revenue. Ads are hosted and served by Apple, and while there'll be some sort of approval process, Steve's describing it as a "light touch," so it probably isn't the same process traditional apps go through. This makes things considerably more interesting for the mobile advertising business as a whole, since Google's been trying to seal the deal on an acquisition of industry leader AdMob for a while now in the face of some pretty intense FTC scrutiny. Certainly seems like this would grease the wheel a little bit, doesn't it?%Gallery-90060%
Apple to announce iAd / AdKit 'mobile advertising system' on April 7th?
Since Apple's acquisition of Quattro Wireless in January, both parties have been keeping mum on plans for Madison Avenue domination, but now MediaPost claims to know a thing or two about the newlyweds. According to the report, Apple will apparently unveil "a new personalized, mobile advertising system" which will go by the underwhelming name of "iAd" on April 7th. The article speculates that the service could be heavily focused on location-aware advertising, though that angle could hit some snags as apparently coffee-partner / arch nemesis Eric Schmidt and a little company called Google hold patents on said functionality. Of course, something that drives a wedge between these two players wouldn't exactly be a surprise at this point -- and we'd be happy if Apple doesn't cash in on those ad-supported OS ideas it's recently had. Really, we're not surprised to hear this may be coming, as a tipster just pinged us with info that an "AdKit" reference has shown up in a special file on Apple's public "Phobos" server. This file, which is called StoreBag, provides a public XML interface into iTunes. That interface describes how applications and web browsers can "call home" to either retrieve iTunes information pages or to request that iTunes jump to a given product listing. What you see here is a key-value pair from that file. The URL string that follows after the "adkit-product-url" key suggests that Apple is about to introduce a way to link ads with product URLs. How will this URL work exactly? It's hard to say without any further details, which are regrettably sparse on the ground, but it suggests that ad sourced product links can be used in a similar way to affiliate-driven links. <key>adkit-product-url</key> <string>http://ax.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/adkitProduct</string> Not much else is known about Apple's first venture into the ad business at this stage, but Steve Jobs has allegedly told some executives that this will be "revolutionary" and "our next big thing." Frankly, we're starting to get a little concerned with just how often the folks in Cupertino are bandying around the word "revolutionary" -- but we'll hold our judgments until after this announcement happens (if it happens at all).
Apple makes it official, acquires Quattro Wireless
Following up on last evening's rumor, Apple has pulled the trigger and made its acquisition of mobile ad network Quattro Wireless official. A sale price wasn't disclosed -- $275 million is the popular number being thrown around -- but the company's CEO Andy Miller has been immediately elevated to Apple's newly-minted VP of Mobile Advertising position. In a news post on Quattro's site, Miller says that its products and services won't change "for now" -- but considering that it offers tailored advertising across a huge bounty of devices and platforms, we have to imagine Apple's long-term strategy is going to involve making this framework more of an App Store value-add for developers. Time will tell, but one thing's for sure: this is good news if (and only if) it either makes life easier on devs that want to offer awesome free apps or finally ushers in the era of free, non-carrier-subsidized, ad-supported smartphones that don't suck.
