“Apple’s forthcoming smartwatch poses a conundrum for advertisers: How to tap the enticing possibilities of the tiny gadget without overwhelming consumers with messages,” Malathi Nayak and Christina Farr report for Reuters. “At this week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, mobile-marketing firm TapSense plans to release an Apple Watch ad-buying service. The service will provide a first glimpse of how businesses can serve up ads on the watch, even though the gadget will not be available until later this year.”
“At issue: the same qualities that render the watch exciting to Madison Avenue, such as the ability to detect customers approaching a store and to zap an ad directly to their wrists, also risk alienating those customers,” Nayak and Farr report. “Apple declined to comment on the use of its watch by advertisers, and will not attend CES officially. But many companies that make devices and services based around Apple products will be there, including several that are working with WatchKit, a software-development tool Apple released in November that allows developers to build watch-tailored applications.”
“Using that tool, developers are devising Apple Watch ad formats including interactive wallpapers on the watch dial with brand logos and personalized clock faces, said TapSense’s chief executive Ash Kumar. His product helps developers insert ads, bought and sold instantaneously, in those apps,” Nayak and Farr report. “Businesses could use those apps to notify customers of special deals, but only within already-opened apps, Kumar said.”
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MacDailyNews Take: As always, if the marketing efforts deliver positive experiences (deals, important information, etc.), they will be embraced. If not, they will be resented.