Apple has recently inked a deal with a San Franciso based
video advertising start up called Podaddies to develop advertising
compatibility for both Quicktime and iTunes.
While no money has yet been exchanged in the deal, does this
mean that future downloadable iTunes videos could have embedded
advertisements included?
Currently, Apple does not provide any ad-supported content,
but I
wouldn’t put it past them given the revenue potential that the
advertising industry now has.
Mobile Video Players
The main concern that I had with ads in video downloads is the
fact
that a large majority of the video content downloaded via iTunes is
played on mobile devices, such as iPods.
Hypothetically speaking, how
would Apple implement embedded ads into mobile video players if iTunes
were to gain them?
That’s when I discovered that the team of five at Podaddies
has
already developed a technology that allows ads to play on web-connected
iPods and iPhones, which would still leave out older iPods and other
non-connected devices.
To that end, Nate Pagel, CEO of Podaddies, has
stated that work is already underway on creating the same technology
for other devices as well.
Mere Coincidence?
Is it just me or are there others who think it is more than
just
coincidence that this small company happened to partner with Apple
while also hard at work getting their product to work with as many
Apple devices as possible?
Sure there are others out there (such as Kiptronic)
with similar developments who will provide competition for Podaddies,
but up until this point Apple had not been involved with this growing
industry.
This leaves Podaddies with an advantage… not to
mention a
large pre-existing viewer base if Apple were to decide to implement the
technology into iTunes videos.
As Kristen Nicole of Mashable
noted,
the inclusion of ads could be seen as beneficial, “as [Apple] could
then cater to advertisers, and even better entice networks to
distribute free, ad-supported content beyond pilot & season
premier
episodes.”
This is a very interesting point, because many potential
viewers (myself included) do not see any point in paying $2 per episode
to download, only to watch the video once.
Conclusions
With the announcement of NBC
Direct, it has become evident that this is becoming a growing
concern at some television networks.
As far as whether Apple will ever provide ad-supported
content, Mr.
Pagel said he doesn’t think it plans to. Hmm… they
sure do seem to have
a lot of interest in it if they never plan to use it.
Michael Garrett is a contributing author discussing the social networking world, his work can be found on Profy.com
