Unilever to market Dove for Men on Apple’s iAD platform
According to Apple CEO Steve Jobs, the iAd platform “offers advertisers the emotion of TV with the interactivity of the web,” and iAd’s will reach millions of iPhone and iPod touch users - a ‘highly desirable’ demographic for advertisers, he added.
“With iAD, we’ve been able to create some of our most powerful and compelling ads ever. iAd is the perfect mobile format to reach and engage with our customers,” said Rob Master, Unilever’s North American media director.
iAd mobile advertising network
Currently, when users click on mobile ads, they are almost always taken out of their app to a web browser where the advertiser’s webpage is loaded, according to Apple. With this new technology, however, users can stay within their app while engage with the ad, such as playing a YouTube video or playing games, the company says.
Unilever said that although Dove for Men will be the first of its brands to advertise through iAd, other Unilever brands are expected to run ads on the new platform in the future.
The company believes that advertising in this way will allow it to reach a higher number of consumers as more and more people embrace mobile internet.
“We know that 25 percent of the world is online now, but the next 75 percent will mostly get online via mobile – and mostly in developing and emerging markets. This partnership will offer us the ability to work within what we believe will be the future of the mobile internet,” said vice president of global communications planning, Babs Ragaiah.
Chanel and Target also sign up
Apple says it has generated $60m in iAd commitments for 2010, which represents close to 50 percent of the total US mobile ad spend forecasted for the second half of the year.
Other companies to sign up to iAD include luxury beauty brand Chanel and mass retailer Target.
Apple will sell and serve the ads, and developers will receive an industry-standard 60 percent of iAd revenue, the company said.
