I think iAd works best when it's possible to create a fresh immersive experience. If you're only using the platform to repurpose content a user could easily find elsewhere, it may not be worth their time or yours. If the product or message supports development of content that provides value, entertainment or otherwise, for a user, the platform offers ample opportunity
The Sharethrough ad placement was done in a native format that is easy to blend in with the other web content. We designed our ad to make sure it provides a fun informative experience to our customer while selling some of the services.
Advertisers can use Sharethrough to communicate with customers in a way that other ad channels can't.
As advertisers we encourage clients to use content that is interesting to customers instead of just carrying a heavy sales message.
We can use the sharethrough space to create a fun message for customer, however, we always had trouble finding the landing page to take people to. Not every client has enough budget to create a new landing page for every campaign. If Sharethrough allowed for landing page support at a low cost, that would be great.
Another problem was that the placement of the ads were mostly random (at least that's what I was told at the time) It's hard to control where our ad would show up. It is possible that our ad message may be inappropriate with the rest of the content. For example, if this was placed at a news channel, we wouldn't want to have our funny message right next to tragic stories.
In some instances, we developed an experience for AdMob simultaneously with our iAd experience, working with both teams on a daily basis. While the Google team was skilled, receptive and helpful, Apple device functionality was broader and thus allowed for a little more imagination in bringing intuitive relevance to the creative content we developed
The difference between Sharethrough and the other channels is that Sharethrough allows for a better story telling experience with the multi page carousel experience. We used all the different channels for different types of messages and needs.
