If you watch a lot of Hulu or a lot of professionally released YouTube videos, you've quickly grown tired of the same ads over and over and over and over and -- OMG! YOU WANT TO SMASH YOUR MONITOR IN!!! Well, that same lovely experience might just be coming to your iOS devices.
According to a NewTeeVee article, Apple's working on the means to bring all the excitement of video advertising to videos themselves. Likely to be launched some time next year, possibly as early as the first quarter at the January event, iAds for videos would only target iPhones and iPads in the beginning. But that's just the start. Obviously, Jobs' hobby, Apple TV, would be the next target. With sales of Apple TV going through the roof, clearly the rental model is one means of income while this represents another.
Publishers and content creators would have the choice of running pre-roll, mid-roll, or post-roll videos (or all three), and these would come in either a QuickTime or HTML-5 flavor. Increasing the range of possibility to QuickTime allows advertisers a much faster route to porting their ads rather than redesigning for HTML-5. Plus, this could go a long way toward alleviating the concerns of certain networks and cable channels who have been leery of bringing their shows to Apple's playground.
While we all enjoyed the relatively commercial free days of early internet video options, clearly the writing is on the wall for that model as publishers and advertisers try to figure out ways to recoup revenue lost on falling TV advertising. DVD sales and rentals, whether streaming or delivered by Netflix, just hasn't been cutting it, apparently.
Thankfully, we can all be glad for the time being that iAds has been getting a slow start. Remember a number of advertisers have been leery of working with iAds due to Cupertino's controlling nature. More than one big name has pulled their buy with Apple for just this reason, while developers have cited a lack of direction and tools. You know, the usual lack of transparency we've all grown to know and love.
