
An experiment in iAd - faizanaziz
http://blog.metarain.com/post/83086723160/an-experiment-in-iad
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huhtenberg
25 downloads on 1 million impressions. Damn, that's sad.

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faizanaziz
It used to be much worse. Read this [http://rayvinly.com/iad-workbench-
campaign-performance-analy...](http://rayvinly.com/iad-workbench-campaign-
performance-analysis/)

Compared to other mobile Ad networks is this bad?

Remember this is not taps, this is actual downloads...

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jonknee
Yes, compared to other mobile ad networks this is bad. People aren't rocketing
up the install lists by having their $10 a day budgets not being filled.

> We chose to run the ads on apps from the following categories: Photo &
> Video, Social Networking, Entertainment, Games, Food & Drink and Utilities.

Those are some of the very largest targets you can have. Apple was unable to
provide enough impressions to meet $10 a day.

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faizanaziz
Agreed. The thing is that after they have put the price to 50 USD it
incentivises indie developers to test it out, which intern results in a higher
fill rate for the apps. I think this is just a start, maybe there is a lot
more.

Just a question is the CPA also really bad compared to the other ad networks?

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jonknee
It doesn't seem bad, but the CPA doesn't really matter if they can't fill. If
Apple is leaving money on the table that means they just don't have the
impressions (which is believable, you don't see iAds in a lot of apps).

It could also be a targeting problem (they don't know who is most likely to
download), but iOS users are pretty app happy so I would imagine this is the
easiest type of ad to convert with. Apple has a huge advantage here as the
control the whole ecosystem and are the only ones in the world who can
optimize the App Store. Just 25 installs after 1,702 taps for a free app with
good reviews seems depressingly low.

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calvin_c
I feel like there's so much negative I've heard about iAd, but this is the
first real feedback I've ever seen on the tool. Now that they've reduced the
minimum spending cost it seems like we should start seeing more soon.

I'm interested to know if anyone has any experience from the developer side,
how iAd compares to non-native Ad services within iOS apps. What is that
experience like?

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neals
They used to ask a million dollar minimum spending? That's insane, right?

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coldtea
No, it's perfectly reasonable.

They wanted to jump start the service with few select big clients, like Nike,
Coca Cola, Disney etc.

For those kind of companies, 1 million for an ad campaign in a major mobile
platform is small change.

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jonknee
Except that didn't happen and they had no ads to run on their highly touted
network. If you want to jump start the service with a few big fish you sign
deals with a few big fish. You need to have ads to fill inventory or there
will be no inventory to sell.

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coldtea
> _Except that didn 't happen and they had no ads to run on their highly
> touted network._

Nope, it did happen. When they started it they had quite nice rooster of
collaborating companies, and quite good conversion rates. At some point, they
had 15% of the mobile ad market.

Plus, they didn't just go from 1M to $50 because nobody came to them at $1M.
That was the inital price back in 2010, and just for the launch. Afterwars it
was a gradual progress of opening the service and letting more advertisers in
(went to $500,000, then to $100,000 etc)

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jonknee
> Plus, they didn't just go from 1M to $50 because nobody came to them at $1M.
> That was the inital price back in 2010, and just for the launch. Afterwars
> it was a gradual progress of opening the service and letting more
> advertisers in (went to $500,000, then to $100,000 etc)

Sounds like a roaring success!

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coldtea
> _Sounds like a roaring success!_

Or a gradual rollout.

Why assume their intention was to only catter to $1M customers and leave all
the long tail untapped?

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hagbardgroup
Thanks for sharing. I hope you follow up later when you scale your campaigns.

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faizanaziz
Definitely plan to

