Urbanspoon gets plug in iPhone ad
Seattle's Urbanspoon, whose online restaurant locator has quickly become one of the most popular iPhone applications, gets a huge plug in Apple's latest ad campaign. — The ad shows Urbanspoon's slot-machine-style restaurant locator in action …
Context & Ripple Effects
Apple's decision to build its latest iPhone ad around Urbanspoon's slot-machine-style restaurant locator is an early example of the company using its own marketing muscle to crown App Store winners — a playbook it would repeat when Pizza Hut landed a role in a later iPhone spot. It also lands squarely in the moment when location-based apps were emerging as the iPhone's defining category, weeks after coverage of the state of location-based social networking on the iPhone catalogued how crowded that field was becoming.
First-order effects
- Urbanspoon gets national TV exposure paid for by Apple rather than itself, likely accelerating downloads and cementing its status as one of the most popular iPhone apps at essentially zero customer-acquisition cost.
- Apple signals to developers and advertisers alike that featuring an indie app in an official campaign is now part of how it markets the platform itself.
Second-order effects
- Other restaurant and local-discovery developers face pressure to chase the same visibility — through App Store rankings, PR, or pitches to Apple — effectively making Apple's ad team a gatekeeper of which consumer brands break out on mobile.
- Brands begin treating the iPhone as an advertising channel in its own right, foreshadowing the paid placements and branded-app deals that follow.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Apple's editorial and marketing choices become a structural force in shaping which mobile categories and companies win — a dynamic later visible in Apple buying place-intelligence startups like Spotsetter rather than leaving discovery to third parties.
- Location-based consumer search gradually consolidates around platforms and their chosen partners, raising long-term questions about dependence on a single gatekeeper for distribution.
The trend: Apple's own advertising is becoming a de facto ranking system for the App Store economy, elevating selected apps into categories — like local discovery — that will define the smartphone era.