First iAd Campaigns Come To iPhone

With Apple launching its new iAd network last week, and the first few advertising campaigns using iAd popping up, it is time to have a look at whether these campaigns are delivering on the anticipation.

The new service has received a lot of media attention and has been predicted to be a big hit. According to Apple CEO Steve Jobs, Apple has developed iAd to “help developers make money through advertising so they can keep their free apps free.”
Some of the key features of iAD include:

• iAd will allow advertisers to deliver interactive ads to consumers without them leaving the original app
• easy to implement, as it is built into the iPhone OS
• very interactive, providing full access to all the special features of iPhone prouducts

Millennial Media: Apple OS Grows By 36 Percent In June, Android Up By 23 Percent

Mobile ad network Millennial Media, which claims that its network reaches 82 percent of 72 million mobile web users in the U.S., is reporting that globally, Apple OS requests are up by 36 percent in June, after dropping 33 percent in May.
Android requests continued to rise, and grew another 23 percent month over month. Android is now up a whopping 439% since January. iPad requests are also increasing at a fast rate, growing 206 percent in June, after rising 160 percent in May. RIM ad requests increased percent month-over-month, posting a 41 percent increase in requests since January.
In terms of ad impressions, Apple’s OS remained the leading Smartphone OS on Millennial’s network in June with a 56 percent share of impressions and an 8% growth month-over-month. RIM was the second largest Smartphone OS for the eleventh consecutive month, representing a 17 percent share of impressions for June, dropping by 2 percent from last month. Android’s OS remained the third largest operating system in for the fourth consecutive month, representing 11 percent of impressions, dropping by 4 percent from May.
When splitting ad impressions by device manufacturer, Apple had the largest share increase of 4 percent with approximately 30 percent share of impressions in June. Motorola moved into the number four position, passing HTC and LG, with the mobile company’s devices representing an 8 percent share of impressions for the month. This growth is largely driven by the Droid device, says Millennial.

HOW TO: Optimize Your Mobile Site Across Multiple Platforms

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One of the most difficult aspects of designing for the mobile web is making your site compatible and accessible across different devices. A mobile-optimized site might look great on your iPhone or Android () device, but utterly fall apart on Symbian or BlackBerry handsets. Likewise, a simple WAP-enabled site might be fine for feature phones, but fall short of expectations when it comes to newer and more advanced devices.
We’ve covered some of the ways to streamline the process of creating your mobile-optimized site in the past. Today, we want to take a look at some specific tips and tricks for testing and adding compatibility for different types of devices.

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1. Narrow Your Focus

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It’s natural to want to make your site look absolutely perfect on every possible device that could access your mobile site. However, this just isn’t practical for the vast majority of developers and designers.
Instead of trying to support every platform out there, set out some goals for your site and your potential customers. For instance, if you know that most of your users are going to be using an iPhone, focus on making an iPhone-enhanced version of your site first.