The Toy Story Ad
Apple’s media event last Thursday received plenty of attention for multitasking and the other new features on iPhone OS 4. But one feature in particular – the iAd advertising platform – has incredible potential to change the way users interact with their iPhones.
The Toy Story ad demonstrated some of the amazing technology now available to advertisers. What I found most striking is that nearly everything in the ad is something that a company would today need an app to accomplish. In fact, save for the downloadable Toy Story app that lived inside the ad, there was scarcely any indication that an app would be required for advertising purposes. Will promotional apps for movies and TV shows remain a necessity, or will advertisers replace them with ads inside the apps their audience already uses?
There are still some unanswered questions about how buying iAds will work – Apple will function as a matchmaker of sorts, but to what end and in what depth? How much control do app developers have over the advertisers who appear in their apps? Or is it advertisers who choose which apps they want their ads to appear in? Either way, app developers are about to get much more familiar with concepts like demographics than they ever have before.
Because iAds are programmed in HTML5 and not in Objective C, like iPhone apps are, your standard everyday web programmer could whip up an ad in no time flat. If iAds are so powerful and so targeted that companies begin using ads in place of specialized apps, and if these ads are easier to create in HTML5 than in Objective C, what will this do to the ecosystem of app developers? Will companies still hire outside app developers, or will the task fall to their web guy or their ad agency? Will developers branch out into creating ads, or will they focus on creating apps to run those ads?
When people talk about the future, they always say “Imagine walking down the street, passing a store, and getting a text message with a coupon to that store.” The future may be here soon. Foursquare could capitalize on this in a big way. Businesses that offer Foursquare discounts to mayors could now use location awareness coupons to steer in new and repeat business. And now that the iPhone offers multitasking, location-based programs like Foursquare and (to a lesser extent) Yelp will always know where you are.
Let me step even further into the hypothetical realm. Imagine “secret apps” that do not exist on the app store but most be found within ads. Imagine a level of targeting that would put Google AdWords to shame – only people currently using the Foursquare app in Brooklyn who are male and 25-28 (doesn’t Apple take this info from you when you register your iPhone?) Imagine the most immersive Alternate Reality Game ever seen, and imagine ads with enough tips and tricks to make you forget you are playing with an ad. The future is here, and it is about to get very interesting.
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Great look into the iads. Definitely need more info. on this before the bandwagon comes along, but nice opportunity for innovation. I just hope its the smart marketers that grab this first, and not the big traditional agencies who try to buy and force their way into this new medium.
Let the ad scavenger hunt begin