There is no official word from Apple as I am writing this, but was sort of rumored by allthingsD and BusinessWeek magazine. But iPhone OS 4 event is taking place April 8, and as will unveil the next generation iPhone, Steve Jobs is also rumored to present their new mobile Ad platform with a weird name iAd, and developer kit AdKit. Let me remind you that recently the iPhone company tried to buy AdMob, the biggest mobile advertising platform to date, but it was snatched by Google for $750 million. Apple went on to purchase second best option, mobile ad company Quattro for $275 million.
It’s worth noting that Google has a problem with FTC on their AdMob acquisition, so Google is more than happy that there will be another major player in mobile advertising playground. While AdMob is certainly has wider audience than Quattro, the company who revolutionized smartphone market with their unbelievable intuitive software and App Store marketplace, is controlling the market from top to bottom (App-wise).
Other thing that is of most importance to us, advertisers, is that Apple can get massive amount of information about a user, such as their location, iTunes data (e.g. what music do they like, what app did they purchase), and more. This could provide some extremely powerful targeted advertising that couldn’t be done before. And for what Apple is famous, that they always this of end user experience, so maybe, just maybe, more people will enjoy seeing the ads and not completely ignore them like it is now. It can be fairy easy to overhaul industry that is just 2 years old, they did it with phone market, which is, you know, much older.
