iAd economics may not pay off for app sales

Well this is only the experience of one developer so it's kinda pointless. How much you get out of advertising is going to vary a lot by product. If it's not something people are very interested in then advertising isn't going to change that.

Great comments guys, I think you bring up a really good point about the pricing model for running iAds for cheap apps. I'd love to see the numbers if someone like Cultured Code or The Omni Group ran a campaign for their premium apps.

@Tom & Wonderboy, hit the original link to check out the actual banner they were running. It won't win any awards but it seems like it's far from being bad.

@iArithmetic, I get the feeling he knew he wasn't going to get a big return on the investment, I think it was more of an experiment then a real investment.

@Seth, I should have been more careful in the wording in the body of my post but I did say 'economics *may* not pay off ' in the headline. Good point.

@James, I'll look into that.

@Bigboy, I'm not sure how I'm misunderstanding this bit from Apple's iAd page (linked in the post):

"You can now purchase iAd advertising to promote your app to millions of users across the iAd Network. With iAd for Developers, users can download apps from the App Store without leaving the app they’re in. It’s easy to get started, contact us today and learn how you can drive more downloads of your app with iAd for Developers."

Seems pretty clear to me.

I dunno, Evernote seems to be doing well with its iAds that let you DL the app right from the ad

2 million ad views in six days? isnt that pretty good? there is no telling how many people bought that app simply by using iTunes or on a later date.

I don't know, I guess people expect a lot because of iAd

Hey look its episode #5644 in the ongoing series 'using samples of ONE to derive broad conclusions in mobile application marketing'

Never ceases to nauseate.

Yeah, well it's all been said above most eloquently by fellow commenters.

Dev, you just got owned bruz.

The point of this story is that you shouldn't be using iAd to advertise 99 cent apps.

5007 clicks and 84 purchases tells most of the story. You are marketing to people who have the ability to instantly purchase. They have the iOS device that your product was designed for and they were interested enough to click the ad. The marketer failed to connect the dots from interest to desire.
To say it is the platform when you see the numbers deviate so extremely just shows it may be someone's first marketing rodeo. I would give it another try with an adjusted message. And, yeah if your objective is a $.99 app sell, iAds might not be your best choice. Discover a way to register the buyers of your app and now it's an entirely different story.

This is rank innumeracy on the part of the advertiser. Did he check beforehand to see what fraction of ad views needed to be converted to sales for it to work for him? A quick-and-dirty estimate shows that at least a third of the clickthroughs should end up in sales for it to break even. Really? Maybe he should move to Wall St, they seem to go in for that sort of thing there.

When Apple said you can get quick exposure for your app, my understanding is that it was because you can give your app away for free and use iAds to fund it, not use iAds to promote your app.

Appears to be someone unclear on the concept....