Carol Bartz, the CEO of Yahoo, has nothing but bad things to say about Apple’s iAd mobile advertising platform. Yahoo!? Really?
At least, that’s the way she came across in an interview with Reuters. Although Yahoo was once one of the biggest online properties in the world, it has since been relegated to a category of basically “it still exists.”
However, one area it has been making inroads in lately is the mobile arena. Yahoo has a robust mobile search engine that handles a lot of non-smartphones users’ online queries. It has also been working in the mobile advertising space, a wide open frontier that not a lot of people have made extreme progress in just yet.
Some analysts say Apple’s iAd platform, which will create dynamic ads that are easily tailored and implemented on the iPhone and iPad, has the first big shot at making mobile ads worthwhile. Bartz disagrees.
Bartz takes umbrage with the fact that, like the devices these ads would be on, Apple has ultimate control. And that means advertisers are taking risks by committing resources to a platform that could change or reject anything at any time.
“That’s going to fall apart for them. Advertisers are not going to have that type of control over them. Apple wants total control over those ads,” said Bartz.
But Yahoo has no real promise in this market either. Mobile ads have existed for years and are becoming increasingly important. However, advertisers are still cautious because it is an unknown commodity, and no one knows what exactly the best approach is.
For now, no idea should be shot down. The marketplace will decide what works and what doesn’t.
