Apple Unveils iPad and New Approach to Mobile Advertising

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Apple has undoubtedly created a new frontier for mobile marketing that will see advertisers leap at the opportunity to reach customers in a brand new way.

Apple’s unveiling of their newest gadget created a ripple of excitement and few signs of skepticism as techies awed at its design while others saw it more as an oversized iPod. The new device – approximately 9 times the size of an iPod – offers users a media-consuming touch screen device that is set to compete with a variety of different products already available on the market.

For the critics that believe this is simply a large-scale iPod, there are a variety of functions and applications that are fundamentally changing the way we consume new and old media.

Of all media, book publishers had the most vested interests in the interface and capabilities of the iPad. Set to be a direct competitor with Amazon’s Kindle, the e-book experience that Apple is creating is far beyond the simplicity of reading an e-book. The “sexiness” of the page turning and high-resolution screen partnered with the Apple brand add tangible and intangible value respectively to what Amazon could never match.

Along with gaming and visual media such as movies and television, the iPad’s screen allows users to dive into a growing variety of products available through iTunes.
But the noticeable technical and visual aspects of the iPad are not what strike us the most.

With the iPad, Apple has created a new platform that presents an assortment of content in a more personal way. This new frontier has created a dynamic market of mobile marketing possibilities that advertisers are drooling over.

It is no coincidence that Apple recently acquired Quattro Wireless – a specialist in mobile advertising. The potential gains for mobile marketing is massive and with devices like the iPad carving out new opportunities, Apple has set themselves up for huge future returns. And since the iPad does not support Adobe Flash, marketers are being forced to develop new kinds of ads, rather than adapting Web ads.

As such, an entirely different approach to mobile ads could come sooner than expected. The mobile platform offers advertisers the same tracking and reporting that comes with traditional Internet ads, and it reaches their audience wherever they are, given they have access to an internet connection – something that is becoming the norm in most major metropolitan cities.

Windsor Holden, a principal analyst at Juniper Research, predicts worldwide mobile ad spending will quadruple to $6 billion or more, by 2014.

The opportunity is significant, and the only question that remains is: How will advertisers integrate their offers into the platform that match the needs of their target audiences?