David Yoon is having an interesting week. It started out on Oct. 6 when Apple’s App Store gave its blessing to Been Choice, the ad-blocking app he developed along with his co-founder and CTO Sang Shin. The mini–media frenzy that ensued was immediate because Been Choice said it could do something that other content blockers […]
Citing a guilty conscience, the developer behind the ad blocking app that shot to the top of the iOS 9 charts has pulled his creation off the App Store shelves. Marco Arment, who cofounded Tumblr and created Instapaper before dabbling in ad blocking, said he ultimately couldn’t endorse an app that blocked ads en masse. Arment’s […]
The debate around privacy – and where Google stands – is kicking up on the eve of Apple’s upcoming September launch of iOS 9. Why? Because though advertising revenue hardly tickles the bottom line at Apple, its decision to enable content blocking in iOS 9 affects how Google’s developers monetize. Apple’s content-blocking feature allows developers to create […]
Although Apple’s App Store is seven years old and has a worthy competitor in Google’s Play Store, the app store search and discovery ecosystem is stagnant, say many app store optimization (ASO) platforms. “When we look at the landscape, we see it like the early days of Internet, when search and discovery were a mess,” […]
Adobe and PageFair, a Dublin-based ad-block solutions provider, on Monday unveiled new research that claimed there are almost 200 million active ad-block users, representing a projected loss of $21.8 billion globally for online publishers in 2015. The caveat is that industrywide ad-blocking numbers can be misleading given strong variances both geographically and demographically. That skew […]
Apple’s stance on data collection: “We honestly just don’t want to know,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s SVP of software engineering, to roughly 5,000 app developers at the tech giant’s Worldwide Developer Conference on Monday. “We don’t mine your email, your photos or your contacts in the cloud to learn things,” Federighi said. “All of this is done […]
When the IAB set out to craft a set of standards for digital audio advertising seven months ago, it wanted to address the challenge of consumers shifting to mobile and to organize the fragmented digital audio landscape. The effort resulted in the Digital Audio Ad Serving Template (DAAST), and many in the industry welcomed the […]
While Apple arguably can do whatever it puts its hand to, its recent move to bring programmatic to iAd doesn’t have everyone impressed. JUICE Mobile president and CEO Neil Sweeney didn’t mince words: “They should have done this five years ago.” And that, Sweeney said, begs two related questions. One, Is Apple going to be […]
Apple CEO Tim Cook might have called iAd a “very small part” of the company’s business in the past, but Apple is starting to take programmatic seriously and the partners are piling up. Following Wednesday’s announcement of Rubicon partnering with iAd on the demand side, seven more names are officially on the list: Tapsense, The Trade Desk, […]
When Apple CEO Tim Cook took the stage in Cupertino last month and unveiled Apple Pay, it was game on for many in the mobile payments industry. While Apple’s embrace of mobile payments doesn’t mean retailers immediately need to outfit every point-of-sale system with an NFC reader, megacompanies like Disney, Macy’s, Panera, Sephora, Starbucks, Walgreens […]
When it comes to data collection, Apple is on the offensive… and, perhaps, the defensive. There’s no need to read between the lines of Tim Cook’s attack on the data monetizers of the world. As the Apple CEO stated in an open letter posted on Apple’s website Wednesday night: “We don’t build a profile based […]
Using health data for advertising purposes is a hot potato and Apple’s not touching it. The jury’s still out on Google. Despite the upcoming release of the pulse-reading Apple Watch (available early 2015) and Apple pushing its HealthKit API with developers, advertisers won’t have any access to health data derived from related apps or devices. […]
Considering Apple’s user-centric ethos, there’s a slim chance the watch’s tiny screen will ever be host to advertising in the traditional sense. It’s a move that would be “antithetical to the whole way that Apple works,” said Mark Yackanich, CEO of ad company Genesis Media. “The question to ask ourselves is not a media-specific question, […]
Apple’s first contribution to the wearables market may not be about advertising today or ever – but it could be a step on the way to closing the online/offline gap. The Apple Watch, which fans had previously been referring to as the iWatch, was unveiled to the world Tuesday at Apple’s product launch in Cupertino, […]
Apple is laying down the law for app developers through a set of new rules, which are slated to take effect in conjunction with its long-awaited iPhone release on Monday. Apple’s alterations restrict developers’ access to data from HealthKit, its factory-installed fitness monitoring app, and third-party app extensions. The new stipulations will likely apply to the next-generation […]
Amazon’s not lifting its foot off the gas pedal in the drive for more developer ad dollars. After revealing the Fire Phone only weeks ago, the ecommerce company tried to incent new app creation via a two-month promotion offering $6 CPMs on the Amazon Mobile Ad Network. The company is also making a European push, […]
Apple caused a stir this week when news broke that the upcoming mobile operating system iOS 8 could deliver a blow to location-based trackers by scrambling the MAC (Media Access Control) address. Despite the name, the MAC address is not Apple-specific. Apple began restricting access to MAC addresses last September, when its release of iOS […]
Monetizing apps in the iOS environment means playing by Apple’s rules, and occasionally adapting to changes in how those rules are enforced. Sometimes those changes can impact the way ads are served and tracked, as happened back in February when Apple (briefly) put a barbed wire fence around the use its Identifier For Advertising for […]
Apple has been slow to improve its offerings around mobile app installs, but it’s showing signs of life. Last week, the company issued its first clear signal that its Identifier for Advertising (IDFA) can be used as an attribution tool. But what about its own mobile ad product, a.k.a. iAd? The company has been more […]
Apple has given its tacit approval for the use of its Identifier for Advertising (IDFA) to attribute app installs and post-install actions. The development, welcomed by app marketers and their ad partners, comes two months after Apple spread fear in the app ecosystem by rejecting some apps that didn’t adhere to a narrow ad serving […]
Apple startled advertisers and the mobile app community earlier this month when it rejected several apps from the Apps Store for deriving data from the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) without serving ads. It is unclear whether Apple will continue to restrict certain uses of the IDFA, but advertisers are already looking for alternative solutions. AdExchanger […]
Mobile advertising firm Amobee launched Wednesday a platform update, Amobee LTV (an acronym for “Lifetime Value”), designed to provide app publishers and advertisers insights into who their users are and how they’re using the apps. The release follows Apple’s rejection of apps that derive data from the Identifier For Advertisers (IDFA) without serving ads, a […]
For a mobile ad startup, getting kicked off Facebook’s platform is pretty much the worst-case scenario. As reported by AdExchanger last week, this nightmare recently became reality for two companies, HasOffers and Kontagent, who were found to have violated data collection policies and were removed from Facebook’s mobile measurement partner (MMP) program. The rejection of […]
Many app developers and ad tech vendors received a jolt recently when Apple began rejecting some apps that retrieve a user’s Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) without serving an ad. Apple’s decision was especially surprising, since the device manufacturer had allowed that activity for nearly two years. Regardless of Apple’s motivations for this change (the company did […]
John Sculley, the former Apple and Pepsi CEO, joined David Sable, global CEO of agency Y&R, Jessica Gelman, VP of customer marketing and strategy for Kraft Sports Group (which owns the New England Patriots professional football franchise) and others Thursday in New York for a discussion about the way data has changed the marketing “message.” […]
As new apps continue to flood the market, it has become harder for app developers to acquire new users, forcing developers and marketers to think beyond installs to drive more revenue. Apple said on Tuesday that App Store customers spent more than $10 billion in 2013 and that it has paid developers $15 billion to […]
Although China’s mobile users represent the world’s largest smartphone market (research firm IDC predicts China’s smartphone shipments will exceed 450 million in 2014), numerous challenges constrain non-Asian advertisers’ ability to get a foothold. Still, there’s recourse for advertisers looking to break into the Chinese market, largely in the form of partnerships. Chinese mobile advertising is […]
Location-based technology has come a long way from geofences. As mobile usage grows, location data has become more granular, providing marketers with greater opportunities to fine-tune their messages—but it has also created more complications. Apple, for example, switched on its iBeacon technology on Friday to send customers’ tailored messages depending on their exact location in […]
Microsoft has added a new unique identifier to Windows 8.1 to help app developers better monetize their apps, the company said today. “Specifically, in Windows 8.1 we include a unique identifier that can be used to improve the quality and relevance of advertisements displayed within Windows Store apps while providing other services such as analytics […]
Tapping into second-screen viewing and related search habits is the new black. Facebook confirmed Friday it is testing “trending topics” in the news feed after rolling out a hashtags feature, according to The Wall Street Journal. Apple and, especially, Twitter have made notable moves in the space. But, for all of the interest, the fact […]
