Filed under: Internet, Adobe, iPhone
With iOS 4 in the wild, and with news that the iPhone 4 will begin its deliveries tomorrow, iAds are about to become part of the shiny white elitist experience. If you haven't heard of iAds, they're the equivalent of Google's AdMob service: it's the next-generation of smartphone advertising, basically. Instead of being popped out of your app and into a Web browser, you're shown full-screen video and interactive ads.
Just like every other advanced ad-serving system, iAds are also targeted. Play a golf game, and you'll get golf ads; search for local fast-food joints and you'll get food ads -- that kind of thing. The good news is, like Google and Yahoo, you can opt-out of the Apple iAd targeting by simply visiting http://oo.apple.com on your iOS 4 device. Ads will still be displayed of course -- they just won't be targeted. I'm still not sure whether I prefer my ads to be anonymous, or creepily well-targeted...
The targeting opt-out is great, but as All Things Digital points out, you can't opt out of the location tracking feature that's present in iOS 4. Now, I don't own an iOS 4 device, but surely you can turn off GPS? Surely the user has control over whether his location is exposed...?
Also, another thing: iAds claim to display 'full-screen video' and feature 'interactive ad content'. I'm not trolling here, but how does the iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch do that without Flash? Ghetto QuickTime movies or something?
Apple makes opting out of targeted iAds easy originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 22 Jun 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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