Apple launched iAd with much fanfare as an advertising platform for its iOS devices. It is intended to keep the apps in the app store free or low cost. Apple apparently curates the ads on iAd to keep the quality of ads high. This post is from the consumer’s perspective (iOS user), not from a developer or an Ad producer/buyer perspective.
The Good : iAd ads are definitely high quality. They do have an Apple intrigue. When ever I see the iAd banner on the app I am using, I am temped to click om them, just to see the new Ad. Ads themselves seem like full blown apps in themselves which encourage the user to interact and explore the product. They are engaging and captivating. And when you are done, you go right into the app exactly where you were before you clicked on the iAd.
The Bad : The iAd, being almost a parallel app seem to be heavy weight. When ever I see one, I know that clicking on it will take me out of the host app for a few mins. In almost every case, when I have clicked on the iAd, I have to wait for a very noticeable time (15-30 secs) before the iAd “app” renders itself. It almost seems ridiclous to have to sit and weight for an Ad to show up. quite a few times I have just given up and went back to the app after waiting 5-10 secs. Apple has to find a better way, may be the iAd downloads before showing the banner or something. may be it is the slow AT&T network. what ever it is, I now have an perception that iAds are slow and I only click if I have some time on my hand.
The Ugly : iAd uses up my precious data plan. Infact not I end up waiting for iAd to show up, I am also paying to see it. With default iPhone data caps being very low (200MB in US by AT&T), I come very close to exhausting it each month, I definitely don’t want ads taking a big bite out of it. Its really non intuitive, and static app, which has no online component (say a game like chess, played agains iphone, or a game like solitaire), constantly uses my data plan to download ads. It is almost unacceptable to me to have an essentially offline app use up my precious data limit all in name of showing me ads.
Here is a neat trick, I am slowly getting into the habit of turning off my network data preferences, whenever I am using a App that is essentially an offline app. This way ads are not downloaded and not shown. win/win : I save on data, iphone runs faster, and no ads (apps run full screen)
