So you are an advertiser on the digital medium and want to explore mobile advertising opportunities? Lets see what options you have.

Banner advertising.Text links. SMS. Give or take some others. (Call hold messages, ringtones- you know them)

Banner advertising. Either on web pages consumed over the mobile internet or within apps (largely iPhone). While that is not a bad thing necessarily- Banners allow for targeted messaging, interactive environments and connect straight off to something bigger, more interactive or useful for the customer; but on the mobile medium, it does seem a bit limited.

In the videos below- Steve jobs (somewhat rightly) mentions- that advertising on the mobile devices need to be different. People consume content on these devices differently, have different expectations from them and have a different mindset/purpose while using these devices.

So Apple sensed a gap and came up with iAds. I thought the name was a poor joke by someone- but no it IS called iAds. Now hope that Google does not call theirs ‘AdNexus’. But then some people would contest that title is already taken- by the IAB.

Anyways- Apple claims that search as an activity is not happening over the mobile phone and that search is largely a ‘computer’ driven activity. Mobile devices- they are different. Apparently people don’t search on their phones. Interesting.

Apart from this behavior gap, there is scale- even when this is limited to Apple devices. An iPhone user spends about 30 minutes everyday- using apps on the phone. And that merits an opportunity of showing upto a billion ad impressions, hopefully monetizable.

iAds also claim to be having the potential of combining the power of Emotions (TV) and the Interaction (Web) and hence promise to be even more interactive than ads on the web and more emotive than  TV.

Really?

Well the demos are interesting- but to spoil the fun- we’ve seen this before. The only things are – you could use these within an app environment without interrupting the app usage experience. Ability to integrate buying from iTunes is a nice touch.

For developers- it works on HTML 5- and this new ad platform is to be built into the upcoming iPhone OS 4.0 release. And like all good ad networks, developers get 60% of revenue. So now everyone could be an adman- and left brain weds right brain in advertising. (Ah! dreams)

Enough said- watch the videos for more details:

PS: Me thinks this is built for the iPAD environment- where it will be awesome from creative execution and user experience standpoint

The second video with more details:
The real cool ways in which this would diferentiate (more than the usability experience of non destructive use experience) is that using iPhone native features this could allow a whole lot of interactivity within apps- geo location identification integration (retail stores), buy now (via iTunes or custom coupons etc), interactive (customize your own stuff) etc

What is not very clear is how will this be sold – considering to make the maximum out of this, advertisers might have to make almost App like ‘ads’

Think about it

Shalabh