Apple’s iAd program has never been responsible for a large portion of its sales, leading Apple to decide that it’s time to take a step back from the platform. According to BuzzFeed, Apple plans to end its efforts at advertising sales and cease its direct involvement with iAd. The company made the statement on its developer web portal, telling app-makers that it is no longer accepting applications for the network.
To accomplish this, Apple will dismantle its iAd sales team and will turn the iAd platform over to publishers, allowing them to directly create and sell advertising content. Publishers will be able to keep 100 percent of revenue generated.
The iAd App Network will be discontinued as of June 30, 2016. Although we are no longer accepting new apps into the network, advertising campaigns may continue to run and you can still earn advertising revenue until June 30. If you’d like to continue promoting your apps through iAd until then, you can create a campaign using iAd Workbench. We will continue to keep you updated, but if you have any questions, contact us.
In September, Apple made the first steps towards automating iAd with an iAd Workbench update that added tools to allow publishers to sell ads themselves in Apple News. Currently, Apple News publishers are able to sell their own ads or have iAd sell on their behalf, while developers have to rely entirely on iAd. Apple is expanding its Apple News model to the App Store and other platforms, allowing publishers to sell directly.
Since its debut in 2010, Apple has failed to establish iAd as a successful advertising platform, mainly due to pricing. At launch, iAd’s minimum buy-in fee was at $500,000 and despite several price cuts, Apple has struggled to get advertisers on board. Apple made several improvements to iAd over the years and attempted to revive the platform when iTunes Radio launched, but it has never been a successful venture for the company.
For end users, the impact should be minimal. The iAd platform is sticking around and should continue to serve up many of the same in-app ads in the same format that’s available today.
Apple Ending its iAd App Network on June 30