» Apple has become a little delusional about the new iAd platform. Apparently they are looking for $1 million dollars for initial ad campaigns on the iPhone and iPod Touch through its new ad network. Apple is betting that brands will be stupid enough to cough up that kind of money to be associated with the new Apple initiative. I would say that Apple has lost the run of itself, given that most brands are not budgeting that kind of spend for mobile advertising (especially in UK and Europe). The other problem is that Apple only reaches a small proportion of the handset market globally, but the thinking here is that advertisers can access a highly desired demographic - and given that they've bought the iphone in the first place probably means they are highly susceptible to branding. The campaigns are likely to be costed on CPV (charged around one cent per view) and CPC (around two dollars). Sixty per cent of the revenue will be given to developers while the remaining amount will go to Apple. These costs seem to be associated with brand advertising. No mention of location-based targeting, which Apple has prohibited developers from using for in iphone advertising. Apple is intent on keeping tight controls over its wall garden. Expect Apple to concoct some half-baked excuse to kick off rival ad nets in the near future. In the meantime I'm going to develop a bunch of apps to get a cut of this new lucrative revenue stream. [WSJ]

» WPP held an investor-focused event in London last week where it laid out its strategies for attendees. The main theme the day: WPP is big on data and technology. Investors were told that the company was investing heavily in technology that will help leverage the mountain of data in media buys. RTB and ad targeting were two areas WPP said it was throwing a lot of resource into - and it continues to develop buying platform B3, which has been hiring quite aggressively here in Europe. I'm thinking they also discussed technology partnerships as WPP can' tbe expected to develop all these innovations in-house. It is afterall a media buying agency, not a tech comapny. Some interesting numbers around what % media spend digital gets also emerged from the event. Digital now accounts for 20% of the group's overall media spend in North America. The EMEA was lower with a share of just 11% of overall media spend. [Clickz]