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What Developers Think About Apple's iAd
Nemilar writes "It's been about a week since Apple rolled out its new advertising platform, and developers of iPhone apps are watching the earliest returns to see how much money they can expect to make from these ads. One developer reported Thursday that he earned $1,400 in one day for his flashlight app. The amount iAds pay is 'a high number when you get it, but you don't get it very often,' said Dave Yonamine, the director of marketing at MobilityWare. The article discusses revenue potential in relation to the only other mobile ads platform, AdMob for Android, and claims that iAd paid as much as $148 for the same number of ads as $1 on AdMob; but this extreme ratio is likely to erode as the novelty wears off."
Getting iADBlock on the Appstore.
http://online.wsj.com/media/iad_D_20100709194420.jpg
Are you seriously going to claim that developers can't put ads on Android? At least the ads are limited in real estate and they dont do much of anything unless you opt to click on them. No ad is great, but they can make an an otherwise pay app, free for use.
I should also point out that the ads are only in third party software. There is no outcry because MS doesn't put ads in Windows, and Apple doesn't put ads in iOS. It leaves that up to the developer to find the balance point between 'irritating as hell', and 'acceptable'.
I hate advertising so much I have stopped watching live television. However, IAd is no more intrusive than any other form of mobile advertising you might have encountered in the past (i.e. browsing nearly any website). Additionally, this is a service that is packaged with mostly free software that you download voluntarily, so it's only as intrusive as you allow it to be.
WTF are you talking about? There is certainly adware that runs on windows as well as on Mac OS. It's just a normal part of the [proprietary] software ecosystem, like shareware or trialware. Usually the advantage of adware is you can use the software while enduring the ad or pay money for the ad-free version.
This business of Apple being constantly praised uncritically or damned irrationally on slashdot is getting really old. Steve Jobs is neither your saviour nor the antichrist, and iAd is just a way for developers to offer an ad-sponsored software option.
Caveat Utilitor
So then don't use the free app and stop whining about not getting something for nothing.
Exactly the point. This gets more "free" apps on the store while getting the developers (and apple, of course) some cash. Personally, I'm fine with it. I already pay for the best apps I use, but always look for free "utility" apps to use once or twice a year. As I understand it, the ad will be a small click-though type, where the banner is a low bandwidth type which will load some more advanced (and b/w intensive) ad on clicking.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
One might argue that Steve Jobs is no more a threat to "free software" than Richard Stallman. Stallman believes that the GPL is superior to, say, the BSD or MIT licenses; a stance that is primarily idealogical. The GPL is not as free as the BSD license, but that's OK. Some people like it better that way. You have the choice. If you look at it from a certain, limited point of view, the GPL can be seen as the "iPhone" of the open source licenses in that it restricts what you can, and cannot do, with the software.
If you take everything coming from Apple as coming from Steve Jobs himself, then we could just as easily point to liberally-licensed projects like WebKit (LGPL), LLVM (NCSA License) and CLANG (BSD), libdispatch (Apache) or launchd (Apache) as arguments against your assertion that Jobs is against free software. Even the Apple Public Source License is certified by the FSF as a true Open Source license.
Your post just shows you have no idea what iAd is. You don't get ads while using the phone. Some free app developers can decide to put ads in their apps, you can chose not to use those apps if you want to. There have already been apps with ads for a while, this is nothing new.
Yeah, it's called don't use an app with ads if you don't want to see ads. Free apps that are ad supported are not new and the way to block it is to not download or use the app.
He is a threat to free software. Also he seems like a major jerk.
In free do you mean open source or free as in no cost? You do realize that Apple contributes to many open source projects right? In fact you can get the backbone of OS X BSD system as Darwin. Chrome wouldn't exist without WebKit. LLVM, CalDAV, CUPS, etc.
He banned code generation just because flash made him cry like a baby. Someone as petty as that with too much power over your computing experience is dangerous.... He wants to make a walled garden where you will only run Steve Job approved software. When someone leaks an apple secret or jail breaks their device and posts steps on how to do it, he wants to call in the sharks with frikken lasers (lawyers).
You have to use the walled garden and their ecosystem when it comes to the iPhone/iPad devices. For Mac computers there isn't a walled garden. The walled garden exists because Apple is making products for the average consumer and not the average geek.
Even Bill Gates/Steve Balmer are not that bad.
That's laughable. Apple doesn't care what you do with any other system. They exercise tight control over their own ecosystem. The difference between them and MS is that MS reached out with their monopoly to harm competitors and partners as well as potential competitors in markets that they may or may not have had any products.
If he was a little more open, I would not be debating an iPad, I would have bought one already. Allowing him to form the future of computing would be dangerous, but one day things like the iPad or even a cell phone will be the future of computing....
Apple has already stated the reasons that the devices are closed. If you don't like it, you don't have to buy their products. In fact you are open to buy competing free and open devices like Android, Palm, HP's Slate (if it ever comes to market). Apple won't stop you.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The walled garden approach of the iphone/iPad sets a bad precedent. But anyway they are still nice devices. If they don't become the absolute future, then it is no big deal, but if everyone gets an iPad/iPhone and the alternatives go away, then we have a problem...
The walled garden existed before Apple. Many consumer devices are still walled gardens. I remember when Nintendo tightly controlled their games on the original NES. Ever wonder why none of the games didn't have the NES stamp of approval? The didn't approve any games they didn't like even if they were compatible. Many think that Verizon is some sort of savior with the Droid but I was on Verizon where they deliberately crippled phones so that you had to pay extra for capabilities built into the phone.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
What restricts a developer from including iAds in their paid-for application?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
The same thing that restricted developers from putting ads in their paid-for apps before iAd.
iAds are a little different, Apple specifies the dimensions. For example in landscape orientation a 480x32 pixel strip across the entire screen is reserved. In Perpenso Calc we sandwich this between the numeric display and the segmented control that lets you select scientific, hex or bill mode. So it is out of the way during normal use. However when you click on an ad Apple puts up a full screen window over your app to display an ad with pretty rich content. Dismiss this ad and you are still in the app. The ad in your app is not a simple link that takes you out of your app and delivers you to some web page.
Yeah, they do it this way because they can't just kill that application ;) Unlike Android when you leave an application it dies in iOS. Yes they added "multitasking server/client support" but how many apps already do this? Don't confuse elegance with pure necessity.
iAds require iOS 4. In iOS 4 the app does not die when closed, it moves to an in-memory background state. Clicking on its icon moves it from background to foreground, it does not relaunch the app. Even apps built for older versions of iOS do this.
So I think we can chalk this up to elegance, or better yet effectiveness. The "normal" ad you see in your app is like an icon that launches the "real" full screen ad. Full screen with rich content allows advertisers to do much more compelling things.
That's nothing. I paid $2500 for a TV, and there are ads on it!
While the guy you replied to is clearly a troll, after reading this thread, I can't help but notice something interesting.
Blocking ads in an ad-supported app (on any platform) is not at all different from blocking ads in a web site. The latter has been described numerous times on Slashdot, and while there were always some voices in support of "ad blocking is stealing!" POV, they were always few and far between (and quickly downmodded), and the mainstream opinion was always strongly "it's my box, and I can read websites the way I like on it, including suppressing ads".
And yet, in this thread, there is a huge number of responses that basically equate ad blocking on iPhone to stealing...
For now.
Let's revisit this situation in 12 months and see how many ads show up on smart phones, and how intrusive they are.
You would think that >$50/month for two years is payment enough for the use of a smart phone, but you would be wrong. Let's see how many really useful apps become "free" because of ads. Or maybe they'll be free for a limited time and then the prices will creep up again for the "premium" apps. There's only one direction this train goes: toward more advertising. Toward more obnoxious advertising as companies compete for attention.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Its not iAds, its iSPAM.