• Ad Age, et al, Tuesday, May 4, 2010 12:51 AM

To be first on the new iAd platform, marketers may have pay $1 million in media spending. Not just a $10 cost-per-thousand, but also a $2 fee every time a person interacts with the ad. And they'll sacrifice creative autonomy. Like all those early adopters, every time Apple drops a device, marketers are asking, is it worth it? Asks Ad Age. Said Eric Bader, worldwide strategy officer for Initiative, a unit of Interpublic Group of Cos. "It's a massive leap between what most brands are doing and seven figures."

Apple is reinventing mobile ad pricing -- and not in a good way. They're essentially double-dipping by simultaneously charging a rate for 1,000 impressions (CPM) and a rate for click-throughs (CPC). That's different from other mobile ad networks that usually charge one or the other, not both.

Right now, any agency or marketer producing an iAd is going to need a lot of help from Apple. Apple hasn't yet released a developer kit for iAds, meaning agencies have no other means to create them. The process is causing tension among some ad directors, who are hesitant to give up control.

"As a creative director, I can completely understand that they created this new baby and they want to make sure it gets born looking gorgeous. But as a creative director, I don't feel completely comfortable letting Apple do the creative," says Lars Bastholm, chief digital creative officer at WPP's Ogilvy.

Although ad agencies are excited about it, they're wary of the level of control Apple is exerting over how ads are created for it. Apple's control over which apps get onto the iPhone has already led to several screwups. A Pulitzer Prize winning comic's app was rejected, no porn in allowed on the iPhone and a teaching tool using an uapproved code was approved then withdraw, says BNET.

Marketers have been much slower to buy mobile ads than expected, largely because consumers had yet to visit mobile Web sites in meaningful numbers. Plus, the process of creating mobile ad campaigns was a technical and logistical feat, reports The Wall Street Journal.

Read the whole story at Ad Age, et al »