iAd Gallery: Enjoy Advertising Without Some Stupid App Getting In The Way

@BenHarvell is a freelance writer and former editor of iCreate magazine. He writes for a wide range of international technology magazines and websites including Macworld, MacFormat and MacLife and is currently killing himself writing two iOS-related books. He’s on Twitter and blogs at www.benharvell.com.

I was about to start writing a post called “Where are all the iAds?” this morning but had to stop when I stumbled across Apple’s new iAd Gallery app. It actually made me laugh out loud. I guess I could have just added “…oh, here they are!” to the title.

My original post was going to question where these “revolutionary” new mobile commercials actually were, which apps use them and whether they were worth the hassle. I’m yet to see an iAd in an app I’ve downloaded.

It appears Apple is worrying about the same thing and, with this new app, are simply lumping them all into a free solution so we can see the “true marketing genius” that goes into an iAd.

The current Customer Reviews for iAd Gallery say it all:

“Pretty nice app, but it would be even better if you could use in app purchase to remove the ads.”

“Finally, I can view all the ads I want without some stupid app getting in the way”

Who said App Store reviewers don’t have a sense of humour?

The official description for the US-only iPhone app reads “Great ads. On-demand. In your pocket. The iAd Gallery is a celebration of advertising…” Oh come on, Apple! You’re telling me that you loved the adverts in apps so much that you just HAD to create a showcase for them? How about we replace “celebration” with “cunning new way to point more people toward an advertising tool that promised so much but isn’t quite getting the numbers we expected”.

If this app was launched with a full disclosure along the lines of “we want to show potential advertisers how good iAd is in the hope that they move to our platform” I wouldn’t have so much of a problem. It’s the word “celebration” that really gets to me. This is a bunch adverts bundled into an app, it’s not content.

I hate to say it, but I agree with the App Store reviews on this one.