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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.
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%
Rumor: Apple's 'iAd' Mobile Advertising Platform to be introduced tomorrow
It seems that a rumor we heard last month is about to be realized: reports indicate that Apple's new 'iAd' Mobile Advertising Platform is set to debut tomorrow. According to All Things Digital, Apple will introduce iAds during tomorrow's iPhone OS 4 preview. Don't let the image above fool you; Google CEO Eric Schmidt is likely to be quite happy with this announcement. Why? Because he'll use it to demonstrate to the FTC that Google 1.) does have advertising competitors and 2.) should be allowed to spend US$750 million to purchase AdMob. That deal has been tenuous at best. Apple filed an advertising patent last November, and purchased mobile ad company Quattro Wireless in January of this year. In February, Apple nabbed Theo Theodorou from Microsoft's mobile advertising sales department and Todd Tran from mobile ad agency Joule. In other words, the resources have been lined up. Now it's time to pull the trigger. We can only guess about how iAds will work, if it's really called "iAds" and so on. But if All Things D is correct, we'll find out for sure tomorrow. [Via MacRumors]
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.
Apple buying mobile ad network Quattro Wireless for $275M?
Now that everyone and their mother's got a smartphone, you've got a pile of sweaty capitalists pounding on the door trying to find every last conceivable way to turn the trend into cold, hard cash. One of the most obvious -- quality apps from a central clearinghouse -- is proving fruitful through countless official platform app stores, but targeted mobile advertising has to be a close second. Google saw the writing on the wall and snapped up AdMob not long ago; one of AdMob's competitors, Quattro Wireless, is now rumored to be locked up for a purchase by Apple for a cool $275 million as early as tomorrow. While mobile ads (or ads of any sort, really) aren't event remotely in Cupertino's repertoire, it's easy to see how this could give the company an opportunity to capitalize on the iPhone's vibrant free app ecosystem, centralize revenue for devs (while stealing a nice little cut for itself), and take back a cottage industry that's flourished since the App Store's debut. At this point, it's unclear what this means for iPhone users -- or would-be tablet users, for that matter -- but seeing how this jibes with recent Apple IP, this tie-up might actually make a frightening amount of sense.
