While advertisers struggle to reach consumers who have abandoned traditional radio in favor of their iPod, Apple says it has no plans to allow commercials on its device or iTunes.
“We have gone out of our way to not take advantage of advertising opportunities,” said Greg Joswiak, vice president of iPod product marketing. “We don’t think it’s part of the experience we want to give.”
Except for a handful of podcasts, industry experts believe there’s little opportunity to place ads on devices such as the iPod.
“People are using an iPod because they want to choose the music they listen to,” said Craig Davis, chief creative officer of WPP ad agency JWT Worldwide. “To interrupt and intrude on that with advertising would be pretty unwelcome.”
12 comments
pretty unwelcome? haha. try very.
that’s pretty much a deal breaker…
Movies start 20 minutes after the scheduled time so they can foist paid commercials on us (sucks). This would be too much; it would be an outrage.
I dunno if you’ve heard about this…but there are iPod ads all over the T system in Boston. They are on almost every single green line train on the system. There are stations plastered with ads, and South Station is a giant iPod advertisement. if this guy is only talking about ads on the device, then he’s right, but man, they are taking every single opportunity they can everywhere else. Absolutely everywhere. Boston is iPod city.
Of course they are advertising the iPod. This is talking about putting ads on the iPod through the music store or podcasts.
on the other hand, would you sign up for a free ipod if you have to listen to an ad every 5 songs or so?
Yeah, put ads on the iPod! Then watch how the iPod gets dumped like nuclear waste!
Someone wants to put ads on MY iPod? I’ll throw mine in a landfill before I have some bozo in my ear trying to sell me a car, or Vioxx, or whatever. Get out of my face!
Google registered a patent for placing context-sensitive adverts into an RSS stream. Seems like a small leap to also enable people to drop context-sensitive adverts (either text or audio) into RSS-enabled podcasts. I’d expect the big podcast aggregators to leap on this new revenue stream like rabid dogs.
I’d hurl my iPod into the nearest trashcan if advertising EVER became part of it. I paid good money to avoid the radio by buying an iPod.
to even think about something like that being a possibility is rediculous. To throw down 300 bucks, then listen to paid ads? id have to get paid to listen to ads. Maybe apple could give out ipods that play paid ads…
To throw down 300 bucks, then listen to paid ads? id have to get paid to listen to ads.
People happily spend several thousand on plasma TVs, then watch content sponsored by advertising.
For myself I have a ReplayTV, that’s like a Tivo but cooler. It records TV, then magically identifies the ads and plays right over them, no pushing remote buttons required.
I’m sure that if sponsored podcasting took off, then people would invent similar advert skipping (“content stealing”) tech for those who wanted to use it.
The Slate podcast has a brief commercial at the start. It’s not bad, but that’s where it belongs – interleaved with audio by the content provider. If they start making ads too long I’ll fast-forward, put in too many ads and I’ll unsubscribe. There’s no good reason for Apple to even think about an “advertising infastructure”; things are peachy as-is.
I’d mind if i paid for a song and there was advertising.
But it would be okay if they had free music, but before/while you listened you’d see a picture ad on the ipod screen, making music free but the song paid for by advertisers.
But definately not on my paid for songs