• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, April 9, 2010

Steve Jobs debuted the iAd platform Thursday with customary flair, wowing his audience with demos of mobile ads that can entice people as immersive entertainment in their own right or as user-friendly utilities for shopping on the go. And all this delivered in a seamless package that doesn't force iPhone users to exit the application or game they're engaged with when they click on an ad.

But if Apple may have raised the bar again for another product category in in-app mobile ads, developers, agencies and analysts weren't so dazzled that they didn't come away without questions beyond the impressive visuals. In particular, Jobs' presentation offered little detail about what type of targeting will be available through the iAd system and on what basis ads be sold-CPM, CPC, CPA? Or a new pricing option to go with what Jobs called a new kind of mobile ad?

If Apple offers the same types of targeting of Quattro Wireless, the mobile ad network it acquired earlier this year and built the iAd network on, then it will include a range of options including contextual, demographic, location-based, and by mobile: carrier, device type, operating system, and browser.

Apple also didn't provide much information about reporting and analytics for iAds. With the variety of interactions possible through ads that act as mini-apps, the units could yield a trove of usage data. This is also a notoriously weak area for mobile advertising where Apple could set new standards through an ad system tightly integrated with its iPhone/iTunes ecosystem.

"This will be interesting to watch as the more effective Apple can be in demonstrating ROI - bought movie tickets, purchased a Nike shirt, bought the movie Toy Story - the more advertisers will spend," noted Forrester mobile analyst Julie Ask in a post yesterday about iAd analytics. "They'll spend on branding now, but I think they'll spend more if they can drive sales."

When it comes to ad frequency, Jobs also talked about showing ten ads during the average of 30 minutes that people spend daily using mobile apps-though not necessarily all at one sitting. That sounds like a lot, especially considering advertisers are still reluctant to show more than a couple of 15-second spots during 30-minute viewed online.

Some marketing specialists aren't keen on in-app ads to begin with. "iAd takes a bad problem and makes it a little better but fails to solve the bigger issue. When people use an application, they want to read an article, play a game, or watch a video, they don't want to interact with an ad," wrote Kipp Bodnar in-bound marketing manager at HubSpot, in a post yesterday. He favors the app-as-ad approach instead.

In any event, alienating app users with a surfeit of invasive ads would be averse to Apple's religion of delivering a user-friendly experience regardless of product or service. Then again, it's never run an ad business before.