News
iTunes Radio to debut with select major advertisers
AdAge reports that Apple’s new iTunes Radio service will be joined by a number of high-profile advertising partners when it debuts next month, including such big names as McDonald’s, Nissan, Pepsi, and Proter & Gamble. The multi-million dollar deals will include twelve-month advertising campaigns that will run within the streaming music service, as well as exclusivity within each of their respective industries through the end of 2013.
iTunes Radio will reportedly include three forms of advertising: interstitial audio and video ads in addition to interactive full-screen “slate” ads that will appear on iPhones, iPads, Apple TVs, and desktop PCs and Macs via iTunes. Audio ads will apparently be served up once every 15 minutes, while video ads will appear once per hour, at times that users are likely to be looking at their device’s screen. At launch, ads will be run across all devices, however plans are said to be in the works to allow advertisers to target ads to specific devices, with advertising costs based on screen size. As previously announced by Apple, an ad-free option will be available for iTunes Match subscribers.
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1
“...while video ads will appear once per hour, at times that users are likely to be looking at their device’s screen.”
Why would anyone make such an assumption about when users are looking at their screen? Unless they’re trying to time their ads with Calendar notifications, I don’t think people will be thinking “Ooh, it’s top-of-the-hour, let’s see what Proctor & Gamble is going to advertise!”
Posted by rockmyplimsoul on August 20, 2013 at 4:08 PM (PDT)
2
The original source report indicated that it would be based on things like starting playback or changing tracks from the screen. Based on that, I’m guessing the idea is a maximum of once per hour—meaning that it might be two or three hours before you see an ad on an iOS device, but it would never be less than an hour.
On the other hand, I would imagine they might come up more regularly on something like an Apple TV.
Posted by Jesse Hollington in Toronto on August 21, 2013 at 6:11 AM (PDT)
3
Well, given I have long been deprived of Pandora and other similar services (except Spotify which I don’t use) living in Europe, I just want to know how long it will take to get iTunes Radio here. I presume it is location sensitive, I also imagine the issue of rights would affect its roll-out overseas. Proter and Gamble have their European HQ in Geneva as it happens.
Posted by decafjava on August 21, 2013 at 8:28 AM (PDT)
4
@decafjava (#3): Being in Canada, I hear you on that one. Fortunately, Apple has usually been pretty good at rolling out things internationally in a much more timely fashion than pretty much anybody else in the market. iTunes Match, for example, became available in a number of additional countries only a month after its U.S. launch, and the iTunes in the Cloud features—for music at least—were available internationally as soon as the service came out of beta.
I’m actually hoping that iTunes Radio will follow a similar pattern in that regard. I think the real issue is that many of these services like Pandora just don’t have the experience or the “muscle” to negotiate as far and wide as Apple does.
Posted by Jesse Hollington in Toronto on August 21, 2013 at 11:25 AM (PDT)