“Andy Miller, the high-profile VP of mobile advertising at Apple, is planning on leaving the company, according to sources close to the situation,” Kara Swisher reports for AllThingsD.
“Sources said Miller — who sold Quattro Wireless, the mobile advertising company he co-founded in 2006, to Apple in early 2010 for $275 million — will become a general partner at Highland Capital, the Boston-based venture firm that had funded Quattro,” Swisher reports. “Apple will search for a replacement for Miller, whose staff was told of the impending departure today.”
Swisher reports, “At Highland, Miller will be working on a range of digital investments from its Silicon Valley office, sources said, and not just in the mobile space.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Lynn Weiler” for the heads up.]
Not surprising… iAd has been the rare Apple flop.
iAd is a tough one.
I think Apple was perhaps looking too far down the road on that one. They were looking for a path to take interactive advertising into the TV side of things one day. And it just didn’t “take”.
They were trying to avoid the corner Google has painted themselves into with the text ad approach. It just doesn’t transfer well into the video world (look at the mess that’s been made of YouTube — useless text ads and tv spots that just get in the way. But the advantage of Google’s approach is that there’s no production cost associated with using the medium.
Apple was just asking for companies to spend way too much to get on-board. It’s easy to pull the trigger on a $100/mo Google campaign. A lot more planning and selling, and faith, required to do an iAd campaign.
iAd = AIDS.
I hate ads. Like labels and stickers plastered all over Windows PC’s. “Intel inside. Ugly sticker outside!”
Another rat leaving the yet to be built space ship.