A few friends have asked what I thought of Apple’s purchase of Quattro, so here it is. Personal opinion only, and worth what you pay for it.
I believe the acquisition is primarily about iPhone and iPod Touch applications. Linking this to adware OS patents, as some commenters have done, is a mistake. It’s partially about the large proportion of Cocoa Touch applications that are free of charge, and the costs of hosting and serving those applications to the public. I suspect that 30% of paid application transactions, while a large amount, isn’t as large as Apple would like, and by buying Quattro Apple can now collect 30% of the advertising gross in free applications. It’s also partially about the end-user experience – by owning a mobile ad network and giving it a privileged market position, Apple can strongly influence the mobile advertising experience. (And by owning a mobile ad network and using new rules plus the app review mechanism to make it the only source for Cocoa Touch application advertising, Apple could completely control the mobile advertising experience.)
Apple will almost surely release an Advertising SDK, which Cocoa Touch applications can use to add banners to applications. Apple’s cut of the advertising gross will almost certainly be 30%, which is about right for an ad network. Developers will almost certainly be paid with a single check from Apple. Brands and agencies will almost certainly buy advertising from Quattro using Quattro’s targeting technology, buying demographics and audiences rather than the inventory on any one application. Quattro will grow quite rapidly as part of Apple.
I don’t think Apple will insist developers use only Quattro for advertising – effectively banning other ad networks from Cocoa Touch applications – not because Apple wouldn’t be so heavy-handed, and not because Apple has any love for the Google-owned AdMob, but because the largest application publishers will want to sell their own in-app ad space directly and optimize yield between multiple parties. But I could be wrong. I also don’t believe Apple will hook up the personally-identifiable details in its database of iTunes accounts to Quattro’s mobile targeting engine, simply because of the privacy-related controversy (although I understand Jerry’s concerns.) But again, I could very well be wrong.
One intriguing possibility: Apple could get quite creative with ad delivery by pre-bundling advertisements with the download and updating advertisements when the device is synced or has a wifi connection. These advertisements could be saved in a central on-device cache, so no HTTP call would be necessary for displaying the advertisement. Potentially, the landing page could be cached as well. Ads without ad calls are a compelling value proposition in a mobile environment, especially when some countries lack unlimited data plans and the lame infrastructure here in America is already under such heavy load.
{ 0 comments… add one now }