Bloomberg: Apple Cutting iAd Rates

Adam Satariano, reporting for Bloomberg:

Apple Inc.’s iAd mobile-advertising business has cut rates by as much as 70 percent as some marquee clients are using rival services, two people with knowledge of the matter said, signaling the company is struggling to parlay its technology leadership into success in the ad industry.

Are any developers making good money from iAd? I’m not aware of any.

During his introduction of iCloud in the WWDC keynote, after he revealed that the service would be free of charge and without ads, Steve Jobs said: “We build products that we use too, and we just don’t want ads.” When he said that, I remember thinking, yeah, that’s an obvious shot at Google, but Jobs really sounded like he meant it. He really doesn’t want ads next to his email.

But I also remember thinking that it didn’t sound like the sort of sentiment you’d expect to hear from the CEO of a company running a would-be major mobile ad network.

Thursday, 7 July 2011