Apple, a company that revolutionized cutting-edge gadgets is now trying to get a foothold in the lucrative mobile ads market that was hitherto dominated by industry giants like Google and Facebook. With the re-launch of iAd (Apple’s mobile ad platform), advertisers can now better target audience across the iOS mobile platform letting them have a shot at a bigger customer base. Apple for long was actively striving for cross-device ad serving and retargeting via the iAd platform without much influence. But this renewed attempt from Apple will help open the floodgates for advertising agencies cutting across industry sectors like retail, game developers, travel apps and a lot more. Thus, whenever a user is exposed to a certain ad, he/she can be tracked across the iOS platform in order to make the maximum impact.
Apple has added audience retargeting capabilities to its mobile ad platform iAd on iOS 8. This means that digital marketers can now follow their customers across different apps and also various websites on iPhones & iPads. This way the customers will feel a greater sense of connection with the brand as advertisers make a renewed attempt at reaching out to them.
Since cookies don’t work on mobile devices, Apple had to create a roundabout way in order to target the mobile users. They achieved this using the universal Apple Id that gives access to iTunes, iCloud, iMessage and all things Apple. This way digital marketers targeting Apple customers can get a detailed report of all the users on the mobile iOS platform helping them understand quirky user behavior to serve tailor-made ads.
Using the Apple iOS platform you can create audience segmentation which will get updated automatically and thus you will see that you can target people in a certain segment using a unified strategy since there is a semblance of a single unit here. Now digital marketers can improve their ROI as they can send personalized messages to users depending on their past interactions with the iOS platform. Apple users spend a majority of their time on connected devices engrossed within apps. Hence no digital marketer can afford to lose such a big opportunity.
If a particular user is at a certain level of a game he/she could be sent a targeted ad in order to encourage him/her to upgrade to the next level. If some user has abandoned an app then he/she could be encouraged to revisit that app. Thus the opportunities are many and Apple is just beginning to experiment with this new idea of tracking customers on their mobile devices where cookies seem ineffectual.
Apple has been a late entrant in the mobile ad space or any ad space for that matter. But it is definitely hoping to take giant strides with the iAd upgrade. Looking at Apple’s history of triumphing at almost everything that it has undertaken in the recent past, it is just a matter of time before it succeeds in this venture too.
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