Apple iAD’s live in Australia, incorporating Google ads

Whilst we haven’t heard much from Apple on the iAD advertising platform lately – if you use international applications on your iPhone in Australia you will notice some of then now have iAD’s.

I noticed Echofon (Twitter client), has put ads at the top of the screen near the search button – possibly getting people to accidentally click on the ads instead of the search.

However once you click on the ad, you have to confirm you actually want to view the ad. A smart move by Apple to make sure only ‘real’ clicks are going through.

So the interesting thing is that Echofon actually has Google ads (via Admob no doubt) in the app and Apple is fine for this – and even has changed these into iAD’s. If a user clicks on the ad they will remain in the application where they can easily go back to the app once done viewing.

Rather neat way to handle this. Reading reviews on the App Store it seems application with ads still do copy a fair amount of criticism. The Echofon app is not all that popular and fairly basic in functionality but interesting to see they are looking to generate revenue on their application with iADs. If anyone knows CTRs and the like for mobile advertising feel free to let us know.