“iAd, Apple’s advertising platform for apps on iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad, has been gradually building up its international business since first going live in the U.S. in 2010, and today comes the latest step in that progress: it is bringing iAds to Latin America, starting first with Brazil and Mexico and eventually expanding to other countries like Venezuela, Argentina and Colombia,” Ingrid Lunden reports for TechCrunch.
“The move is the latest for Apple in a gradual attempt to build up its business in the region, one of the fast-growing emerging markets currently with 350 million unique mobile users, and projections for around a half million [sic billion] smartphones to be in use by 2020,” Lunden reports. “But rather than establishing iAd in Latin America on its own steam, or attempting to handle sales remotely from the U.S., Apple is taking a different route: it’s linking up with IMS (Internet Media Services), a company based across the region and described by its founder and CEO Gastón Taratuta as a ‘market maker.'”
“To date, IMS has worked with the likes of Twitter, Waze, Spotify, Foursquare and LinkedIn on these and other services,” Lunden reports. “Taratuta tells me that for each client, IMS builds up separate teams that work only with the individual clients, and it will be doing the same for Apple.”
Read more in the full article here.
Sadly iAD remains more of an experiment. Apple is not doing enough to build the business. This is similar to how Apple is treating Apple Radio. The Ads on its radio is all about music on iTunes. That cannot be very profitable so a major change is required.
I have a better idea: Apple can afford to get out of the advertising business altogether. Nobody likes ads on their personal electronics — it’s much more user-friendly to sell apps that are profitable on their own right. Bring back the limited-time trial period instead of offering ad-supported freeware.
Google ruined software by conditioning everyone to expect it for free — Apple doesn’t have to follow the Google lead.