Apple started its iAd business in the year 2010 and now three sources have confirmed that Todd Teresi, a former Adobe executive, has been hired by Apple to head its iAd mobile advertising venture. Todd Teresi was the Vice President of Adobe’s media solutions group before he was hired by Apple as their iAd Vice President. Sources have confirmed that Teresi has already started working for Apple. Teresi will be reporting to Eddy Cue, who is a Senior Vice President and also supervises iTunes and the Apple App store. Jodi Sorensen, a spokesperson for Adobe has confirmed that Todd Teresi is no longer with Adobe.
iAd was conceptualized to increase Apple’s stake in mobile advertising revenue. They have managed to get contracts from various companies such as Walt Disney, while some other marketers have criticized it since iAd costs way more than other ad services and only works on Apple devices. According to EMarketer, a research firm, Google leads Apple in the mobile advertising market and it is predicted that it may generate as much as $4.4 billion in revenue by the year 2015. Noah Elkin who is an analyst at EMarketer has stated that since iAd only reaches Apple product users and charges premium prices, it is much harder to sell.
Teresi worked at Adobe for about a year and had worked at Yahoo! for almost a decade as the Senior Vice President in charge of its publishing network and Vice President responsible for worldwide sales. Teresi also managed the digital publishing suite software at Adobe. This software has let magazines and newspaper publishers release digital editions for iPad and Android tablets. He was also involved in striking deals such that of Adobe with WoodWing Software and also acquisitions such as that of Auditude.
Teresi will be taking up the position vacated by Andy Miller who is the founder of Quattro Wireless which Apple acquired around two years back and used as the basis for iAd. The concept of iAd was introduced with the aim of letting application developers generate ad revenue from their apps in a shared revenue arrangement with Apple, wherein when an app carries an iAd approved advertisement; the developer gets to keep 60% of the revenue.
iAd advertisements from the outset were more interactive and graphically rich compared to their competitors, though Google’s mobile ads are more versatile since they work both on Android as well as Apple’s products. Presently, Google leads the market in this sector with 23.8% share of the market followed by Millennial Media which has 16.7% share and Apple ranks third with 15.1% share.
