Apple Lets Google Sell Targeted Ads
Apple Inc. doesn't appear to have barred Google Inc. and others from selling targeted ads inside iPhone and iPad applications, after implying several weeks ago that it might do so. — Software developers say their new and updated applications …
Context & Ripple Effects
Weeks after signaling it might restrict outside ad networks inside its apps, Apple has left the door open: per the WSJ report, nothing bars Google or rival networks from selling targeted ads within iPhone and iPad applications, and developers say their new and updated apps are going through with such ads included.
Why it matters now: Net Applications' metrics already had iPad OS passing Android in usage share barely three months after launch, so Apple's devices represent fast-growing ad inventory — and any SDK-level ban would have redrawn who can monetize it.
First-order effects
- Google's ad business keeps uninterrupted access to iPhone and iPad app inventory, avoiding a forced retreat from Apple's installed base just as that base accelerates.
- App developers retain the choice of which network fills their ad slots, keeping competition among ad networks alive on Apple's platform rather than locking revenue to a single approved buyer.
Second-order effects
- Rival ad networks can compete on targeting performance and payout instead of lobbying for platform permission, shifting the battleground from Apple's policy desk back to pricing and fill rates.
- Any future tightening by Apple now has to be explicit and defended publicly, since the implied-threat approach visibly failed to stick once developers built around it.
Third-order effects
- If platform owners keep treating ad SDKs as a governable layer, control over which tracking and targeting technologies run on a device becomes a standing policy lever for Apple and its peers — a fight likely to recur each time mobile advertising economics shift.
The trend: Mobile operating-system owners are emerging as de facto regulators of which third-party ad-targeting technologies may run on their devices, making SDK rules a recurring lever in platform economics.