iAd on 16 August 2010: meh.

I'm all hip to the in-app advertisement. Developers gotta make some money, right? And most (about 60%) of the ad revenue is supposed to get passed along. That's cool. And given its sizable ecosystem, it sure makes sense for Apple to launch its own ad service.

And, as I've told you so often, the smartphone is the computer. If it's not on the smartphone, it pretty much don't exist in my mind.

Meaning: this cool Nissan ad don't exist. Have you seen it? On your iPhone (or iPad)? I know I haven't. Hell, I've not actually seen a single 'iAd' ad on my iPhone to date. Wasn't this supposed to be a big deal. And isn't Apple being too controlling -- even for Apple -- on this? I mean, ads on the iPhone, ads within the app. Cool. Set your standards, force developers to abide by them, take your cut, then get out of the way. Why all the handholding in developing these ads? Why the big costs? The top-down control on the world's first planet-wide bottom-up communications device?

You can't be great at everything. You can, however, waste a lot of time and resources, and miss out on a lot of stuff you can be great at. Anyway, here's the ad that we all should be seeing but none of us are. Not really.