Well, this looks like a remarkable step up in monetization functionality for the penurious iPhone app developer: the (still in beta) OPEN! and FREE! .app/ads “ad management platform for iPhone developers”. And what is an “ad management platform” exactly?
.app/ads gives you complete freedom over the ad space within your apps by providing an open and free ad management platform. There are a lot of revenue opportunities for app developers today, and you can count on even more direct ad and ad network opportunities being available in the future. Given the turnaround times on App Store approvals, locking your app into using just one ad network, or even just one ad network aggregator, could cost you substantial ad revenues. Take advantage of all the opportunities available to you now and in the future with .app/ads. You can easily manage and run third-party ad network and aggregator SDKs (AdMob, Mobclix, TapJoy, AdWhirl, et al.), direct ads, house ads, content (such as Twitter and RSS feeds), in-app purchases, and developer-direct marketplace offers from just one platform. Use one dashboard to manage your ad space and optimize what is going to make you the most money while maximizing your users’ experiences.
That does sound exceedingly comprehensive, indeed. We had been intrigued by the Flurry AppCircle idea, but since they’ve shown a distinct absence of willingness to answer any emails sent to them, we’ve kinda cooled on the idea of relying on them for any business purpose. [UPDATE: Why look at that, the AppCircle SDK arrived in our mailbox first thing the very next morning. How coincidental!] And these guys certainly do a great deal more, if the non-beta version lives up to the advertising (heh) here. Read more about them at TUAW and at TechCrunch.
Indeed, it would be an interesting exercise to see just how many of the ad providers listed in our increasingly disjointed advertising/analytics collection one could fit into this platform…
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