“Apple will sell audio ads on its forthcoming streaming music service, already being dubbed ‘iRadio’ by many,” John McDermott reports for Advertising Age. “The service is expected to offer highly targeted ads, which could make it pricey — but appealing — to marketers and a major threat to already-struggling Pandora… Apple is expected to announce the streaming music service at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco next week.”
“The audio ads will be sold via iAd, Apple’s mobile ad network, according to a former Apple executive with knowledge of the situation,” McDermott reports. “In addition to audio ads, the streaming music service will also contain the mobile ads iAd currently sells.”
McDermott reports, “Selling interstitial audio ads — ones that play between songs — will allow Apple to offer the service free to users as is typical with most streaming music services. One music industry executive familiar with the negotiations between Apple and the major record labels said the terms of iRadio are more favorable for record labels than other streaming services because iRadio is expected to drive more song downloads. iRadio users will be able to purchase the song they are listening to through iTunes. Syncing with iTunes Match ($24.99 per year) will allow users to own those songs forever, keep them in Apple’s cloud-based storage service and access them on any iOS device.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
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