Apple is looking to charge advertisers about $1 million to put their marketing messages on iPhones, iPod touches, and iPads — and maybe more to be first in line to leverage the unprecedented opportunity.
According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, Apple is getting ready to promote its mobile-advertising play. The paper said Apple could charge as much as $10 million to be one of the few marketers that get to push ads over the devices at the launch of iAd, Apple’s in-app advertising platform. The typical cost is between $100,000 and $200,000, making the iAd platform the premium advertising product for mobile devices.
“This is an audacious and risky move for Apple,” said Greg Sterling, principal analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence. “Still, some advertisers will line up to be a part of the initial wave of iAd advertisers.”
High-Quality Advertising
Apple introduced iAd earlier this month. Apple said its new mobile advertising platform combines the emotion of TV ads with the interactivity of web ads. When users click on mobile ads now, they are almost always taken out of their app to a web browser, which loads the advertiser’s web page. Users must then navigate back to their app, and it can be difficult to return to exactly where they left.
Apple said iAd solves this problem by displaying full-screen video and interactive ad content without ever leaving the app, and letting users return to their app anytime they choose. iAd works with iPhone OS 4.0, which lets developers embed mobile advertising within their apps. The ads are dynamically and wirelessly delivered to the device. Apple will sell and serve the ads, and developers will receive 60 percent of iAd revenue.
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