iAD dead. Apple ad platform not dead.
iAd has been one of the rare failures from post-PC Apple. Steve Jobs announced it with atypical plomb (see what I did there). Apple made a big deal out of it. Apple charged $1 million a pop.
Advertisers/makers of content ran fleeing in the night.
Prices were slashed.
Nobody clicked.
Now, Apple's VP of mobile advertising, Andy Miller, is:
- leaving to spend more time with his family or
- joining some venture capital firm
Still, I don't think iAd is dead. Rather, it merely needs to be re-thought, replaced, and rolled out anew.
Not simply because Apple is at war with Google.
Rather, there's simply no need to leave all that money on the table.
There are 200 plus million iOS devices out there. Over 400,000 apps currently available in the App Store, and about 15 billion apps, give or take, have been downloaded. And, even though almost no one clicks an ad on their smartphone, the very few who do are more likely than not iPhone users.
Offering their own advertising platform to developers for iOS apps for iOS devices, given those numbers, is simply too obvious a business to be in. In fact, it's one line of business where Apple could turn the tables on Google. Take far less of a cut from advertisers than Google does on Android.