• Wall Street Journal, Thursday, April 29, 2010 1:23 PM

Potentially opening the floodgates for mobile ad budgets, Apple might charge marketers upwards of $10 million for first dibs on its iAd mobile ad network, a source tells The Wall Street Journal. Post launch, Apple then plans to charge close to $1 million for ads on its mobile devices this year, sources say. By contrast, ad executives tell The Journal that they're used to paying between $100,000 and $200,000 for similar mobile deals.

"It's a hefty sum," Phuc Truong, managing director at Mobext, a mobile marketing business owned by Havas SA -- whose clients include Sears, Choice Hotels, Amtrak and Volvo -- tells the paper. "What Apple is trying to do is certainly above and beyond what's been done in the past." Apple unveiled iAd earlier this month. Expected to launch by June, the software system will offer ads in the applications available in Apple's popular App Store.

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