iPhone OS 4.0 may feature embedded ads, BOO, Bad Apple!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I just got done watching the Stevenote, and one of the upcoming features of iPhone OS 4.0 is something called “iAd”, it’s a built-in ad server embedded into the OS itself

Needless to say, I’m pissed, I HATE ads, and the thought of having to pay for the smegging things (its my bandwidth, I pay for it, I am NOT willing to subsidize advertisers for ads I will never click on and do nothing but eat bandwidth and slow page loads

I don’t care how “transparently” it’s implemented, I simply DO…NOT…WANT…ADS…, period, stop, end of line!

If iAd is not disable-able, I will simply not upgrade my iPhone OS to 4.0, yes, I hate ads that much, I’m willing to live without multitasking to avoid ads

If Apple really pisses me off about this, I may just decide to make the jump to an Android OS device, and sell the iPhone, or more likely, just use it as an iPod Touch

If I have to “jailbreak” the phone to disable the ad server, so be it, I am NOT going to be treated as nothing more than a walking wallet…

2

You misunderstand completely. Apple is not adding advertisements to the OS. The are making an ad service available to application developers, who can chose to display ads in their apps - which many already do using third-party services.

3

I just read up on this and it does look like it is more what andrewm is saying.

You had me worried!

I imagine that a good paid app won’t have ads, and I like buying the good ones rather than messing around with the free ones that are almost good enough.

4

Good, I had a feeling I was overreacting, that iAd would turn the iPhone into nothing more than a SpamPhone, but, as I said in my OP, I WANT the ability to turn iAd off completely, to utterly disable, turn off, and stop it, I bought the iPhone with my money, it’s my device, and I’m the only one with the right to determine what the device does/does not display (even though the EULA says otherwise, that I’m only “licensing” the device…)

5

But if I’m giving away AwesomeApp (with iAd), then I don’t want you disabling ads. Just uninstall the thing. Provided it’s noted in the store before download, I don’t see a problem.

6

What do you do right now? At least a third of the free apps I have on my iPhone already display ads, with no mechanism to turn them off. Allowing you to turn off the iAds would defeat the purpose of them (to encourage developers to release more free apps, because they can still monetize them at least a little).

I can’t imagine Apple doing that (allowing you to turn it off), because then the developers wouldn’t get paid and they’d just switch back to the existing ad systems that can’t be turned off.

I believe that in 4.0–as now–your only real option is to just not use apps that use this feature. Switching to Android/Win Mobile will just get your ads from a different provider.

7

Funny how having an adblocker on my computer hasn’t caused this to happen to websites. The only websites that force you to turn it off are scam websites that want you to buy crap to even view their video, which turns out isn’t even there.

Also, funny how Apple apps need ads, but free flash apps don’t.

8

I don’t see how you got either of these things from what I said. But just to be clear:

Developers are free to make free, non-Ad apps if they want. Many do. Nobody’s making them put ads in. But if they put ads in to make money (say, they actually want to run a business providing free apps), and they’ve got an option of using a “turn-offable” ad vendor (which turns off their payments) or one that can’t be turned off, the majority of them are going to use the ones that can’t be turned off. And that’s what they’re presently doing – there are no ad-blockers for iPhone Apps (or Android or Win Mobile apps, for that matter). The security sandbox model makes it impossible to block ads out of other processes.

Also, while it’s neither here nor there, ad-blockers ARE causing web sites to go back to subscription models; it’s happening all over the web. It’s pretty much taken for granted among the content community that making a business-sustaining income from ads pretty much takes a site with the popularity of Google (and then only because of their astounding number of eyeballs). Most of the news services, network sites, and hulu have either gone back to paid subscriptions or will in the next year.

Finally, most of those “free flash games that don’t need ads” might not have ads in them, but they’re sure as heck on ad-supported sites and pages, which I guarantee will become paid sites or go away completely if any sizable portion of the community starts using ad-blockers.

9

Okay then, lets use the example of two different users and see how the ad-supported model does or doesn’t work.

User one is the typical computer user, doesn’t mind ads, and has been known to click on those ads that grab their interest, in this case, the ad-supported model works.

User two HATES ads, has never clicked on an ad, never will, and dislikes the waste of bandwidth for what is, to user two, a useless bit of code.

How would blocking ads negatively affect companies serving ads to user two’s device, that user will never respond to the ad anyway, so it may as well not even exist, if user two is not predisposed to click on ads, any ads served to that user’s device is simply a waste of resources.

there is no downside to user two blocking the unwanted ad content, as they would never respond to it anyway.

if the device in question has the ability to block ads at the source, and this feature can be turned on or off at the user’s discretion, but is turned off by default (show ads=true), the content supplier can serve the same data to both users, user one won’t have to do a thing and will see the ads, user two disables the ad server on their device, and the device simply does not display the useless data on user two’s device, this prevents user two from dealing with the offending ads, yet the vendor does not have to tailor their content to user two, the same content is fed to both user devices, user two just took the extra step to disable ad content on their device

How does that negatively affect the vendor? they would have never gotten user two’s business in the first place anyway, they will have lost nothing

10

Because if you put the option in there – essentially, if you ASK the user “hey, do you want to see ads or not?,” the overwhelmingly vast majority of them will turn them off – even if they belong to user group 1 that may have actually clicked an ad had they been exposed to it.

Given your options, the user will always self-identify as someone who “doesn’t ever click on ads.” Many would.

11

Aside from atomicbadgerrace’s correct observation, the other argument is that there are so few User Two’s in the world that it’s not worth the penalties to code for them. Most people claim that they aren’t affected by ads (passive media) and won’t click on them (the web) – but in the real world studies show that people are affected, and most folks do click on ads, however infrequently. And that’s not even counting the case where the ad vendor pays for views rather than click-through, in which case the developer doesn’t care if you click or not as long as you see it. And if it’s click-through, the developer is STILL going to use a service that makes you see the ad, because if you don’t show the ad, then you’re guaranteeing that you won’t get a click. It’s true that the “cannonical” number 2’s won’t click them anyway, but many folks who would self-identify as number 2’s actually will.

I feel like I’ve been put in the position of supporting ads here, and I don’t want to come across that way. I don’t like them either, but I understand that for most developers, someone needs to pay for their efforts or they’ll stop doing it. And since money is valuable to me, I’d often rather have an ad-supported free app than an ad-free paid one. I’m trying to state the way the market is, not the way I’d like it to me (wherein everything is free, but I still get paid somehow, anyway). And again: what I’m describing is the way it works today, without reference to iAd at all. All Apple’s doing is making themselves a broker of the ads – nothing changes at all from the end user’s point of view, just from the developers’.

Luckily, smart developer often offer a free, ad-supported version and a paid, ad-free version. That’s the best way to support the Number 2’s of the world – they can pay for the ad-free version, and everybody’s happy.

12

There are already ads in many free apps anyway, this is just Apple’s way to get a piece of the action.