There’s no question that online advertising can use a lot of help. Google, by far the industry leader in online ads, has the ugliest ads I’ve ever seen. While they are obviously very effective and make money, there’s no one online who wouldn’t want to add a little quality to anything we have to see in our browsers.
On our iPhones, this is even more important. Apple has been overly strict about their app approval policies, which has definitely caused headaches for developers, but has helped most of the apps sold in iTunes to be quality programs that look and function well. It’s important this level of quality extends to iAds as well, as the small screen doesn’t would make poorly designed ads even harder to accept.
Besides, who even clicks on those ads? Surely not the type of consumers that purchase Apple products. According to research unearthed by Danah Boyd, it’s the same people who enter sweepstakes online. Seems those aren’t quite Apple’s market.
And now Adidas is pissed. Do you care? I do not.
Most online ads have seldom been pretty. Google has made billions on ads that could have been designed by a five-year old, but we all know that Apple would never allow text ads of that low quality appear on their devices if they had a choice. While Apple obviously can’t block every ad on Safari, they DO have plenty of power to prevent such ugliness on their mobile devices.
In an online world where we’re besieged by pop-up ads, movies that we can’t skip and now overlays that interrupt our browsing experience, I WANT Apple to be strict with their iAds. I WANT them to have as many restrictions on them as they have on their app store. If this means I’ll have to pay slightly higher prices for apps that aren’t subsidized by ads, so be it.
You notice that Macs don’t come with junk programs installed, stickers you have to peel off or ads disguised as extras, why should iPhones and iPads?
