Stand back, Steve Jobs. Randall Rothenberg is taking on the iPad to make the Internet safe for advertising. In a blog post Thursday, the Interactive
Advertising Bureau head declared the new Apple tablet a threat to advertising as the latest attempt to "semi-privatize" the Web.
Walled gardens are spreading across the new media landscape
from social networks like Twitter and Facebook to Amazon's Kindle to Microsoft's Xbox and Sony's Kindle. Citing Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff's recent essay on the "Splinternet," he warns that all forms of media "are about to become gated intranets
-- with significant implications for marketers, media and agencies."
In the iPad's case, Rothenberg takes issue specifically with its lack of support for Adobe Flash, a core element of much
online display advertising. Ad executives interviewed Wednesday also cited the iPad's lack of Flash as a
drawback but welcomed the device's larger screen size as a plus for mobile marketing.
But the iPad still is not as bad as Amazon's Kindle, "more akin to a company town, with everything from
access to product offerings to pricing tightly managed." Increasingly, "degree of openness" will be the key differentiator among all the walled gardens springing up around the Web, he argues. Netflix
streaming is fairly close, Boxee is more open. But overall, fragmentation is growing.
Rothenberg's solution? "Supply chain détente." Device makers should join together to adopt consistent
standards to allow the advertising and marketing to flourish. And to the extent that walled gardens impede growth, publishers have to redouble efforts to include marketing services in their offerings.
But Randy, hasn't the problem with the Internet been too much inventory, not too little?