FingerBakery Blog

I have been reading a ton on Twitter the past few days about a WSJ article that stated that Apple’s upcoming iAd network is going to basically be a goldmine for developers. I hadn’t written anything about this, but as someone who launched a website in 1999 supported by ad banner revenue, and then watched the ad market crash immediately during the dotcom bust, I have put a lot of time over the years into thinking about ads, fill rates, CPM, etc.

Jeremy Olson from Tapity (an excellent blog!) wrote a post about iAd today and I found myself typing out my thoughts as a comment on his site and I thought hey wait, I should really be putting this kind of energy into my new blog haha! So I’m just pasting here what I wrote there, for better or worse:

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Those are sexy numbers for sure, but the problem will be in filling all the available inventory. I just can’t imagine there being enough advertisers at that price to really fill a ton of the spots.

Also, if some big company, let’s say Pepsi for instance, does decide to purchase a bunch of iAds, I am almost sure they will stick them all in the big apps by big publishers. In my opinion, the average marketing guy would much rather stick an ad in some EA game someone paid $9.99 for (so we know they’re not shy about spending money) than in a cheaper indie app. It looks more legitimate to their bosses or whoever they tell about it to say “oh yeah we ran an ad buy in NHL Hockey 2011 for iPhone”, plus the risk of click fraud is reduced hugely.

I could be wrong though (and I really hope I am!), and there may be a ton of advertisers who discover that $2/click is great value for them and inventory might not be a huge issue. That would indeed be an awesome thing!

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