Edible Apple

AdMob, the premier mobile advertising company in the world, announced this week the arrival of interactive video ad units for iPhone apps.

For the first time, mobile video is truly interactive as we’ve included customizable in-player action buttons enabling consumers to engage with Web content and more video content without leaving the video player. Advertisers can also include action buttons that open the app store and iTunes store to drive downloads of branded content. This ad unit helps advertisers and agencies extend their existing campaigns to mobile by using video assets created for other mediums and overlaying interactive elements in the highly measureable mobile environment. Advertisers can opt for action buttons that allow users to share video content with their friends or connect to social networking sites within the video player, making it easy to add a social media element to their campaigns.

Yikes, that sounds like one gigantic headache.  I get that mobile ads serve a necessary purpose, but who in their right mind really wants to interact with advertisements and deal with action buttons that exist solely to drive downloads?  Think about it – the reason people download free and lite apps is precisely because they don’t want to pay for a full version of an app.  The idea that a video ad, interactive though it may be, will sway the minds of iPhone users seems far fetched at best.

Here’s an example of how a Madden ’09 interactive ad unit would look to an end user.

Looks enticing for advertisers, but definitely not something I want to see when I launch an iPhone app.  The ads, thankfully, won’t be built into the game but will stream remotely.  AdMob writes that each ad will be offered in different bitrate encodings to accommodate a particular device’s connection – whether it be EDGE, 3G, or Wi-Fi – as a means to ensure fast loading times.

Incidentally, Google recently purchased AdMob for a cool $750 million, and interestingly enough, Apple had reportedly talked to AdMob about a potential acquisition – something that obviously fell through.

A lot more over here on AdMob’s blog.