• by Karl Greenberg , July 2, 2010

Nissan has signed with Apple's advertising platform iAd to promote its its zero-emission Nissan Leaf electric car. Nissan is also the only automotive brand to date to use the platform. 

Nissan reps say the iAds will help the company continue to reach early adopters and will also target the 15,000 or so customers who have already placed reservations for the car, which will be available beginning in December with mass-market availability by 2012.

Apple says that iAd allows marketers to advertise with rich media like video and launch games, and allows purchase without compelling users to leave the app in which the ad is embedded.

Nissan is promoting the deal with a video touting both the Leaf and the iAd platform itself by promoting Leaf as analogous, technologically, to the iPhone. The video starts with a shot of a CGI Leaf rotating 360 degrees.

A voiceover says: "This is the Nissan Leaf; it's 100% electric, uses no gas and has no tailpipe. It is the first mass-market electric car and it has been reserved by over 14,000 people." Then the video shows the iPhone. "This is the iPhone. It is also 100% electric. And with millions of users, it is the perfect match for the Nissan Leaf."

The video then goes on to explain how the ads work, how it "Lives inside the the app, and doesn't send you to the browser. Let's take a look." The video then runs a high-concept science-fictive advertisement for an orbiting spa called the Peace Spa -- which, the ad explains, runs on a new kind of helium discovered on the moon.

"We got there by teleportation, which replaced the space elevator, which was built by the electric spacecraft, which all started with the greatest invention of 2010, the all-electric Leaf."

The video then shows the functionality of the ad platform, and that users can reserve the car within the app which will also run a sweepstakes built into the iAd that dangles a new Leaf as the grand prize. "And when you're done you go right back to your app without losing your place."

The iAd platform also runs on iPod Touch. Apple said in a release last month that AT&T, Best Buy, Campbell Soup Company, Chanel, Citi, DirecTV, GEICO, GE, JCPenney, Liberty Mutual Group, Sears, State Farm, Target, Turner Broadcasting System, Unilever and The Walt Disney Studios will also advertise on iAd, and that commitments for this year have surpassed $60 million, or almost 50% of the total forecasted U.S. mobile ad spending for the second half of 2010, per the company.