Fusion Ads

Textie and Touchy

Written by Michael Mistretta on April 29th 2010

Introducing Textie!

Today our friends Mason Lee and Loren Brichter launched Textie, a free and gorgeous way to text from your iPhone or iPod Touch. Free download, no monthly expenses, no subscription fees, nada. It’s fantastic. We’ve been playing with the beta for a couple months now, and we have to say — Textie is the real deal.

You can text other Textie users, regular email addresses, and most U.S. mobile phone numbers at absolutely no cost. Picture messaging is a hoot, and push notifications work so well that you forget you aren’t using the native Messages app. Textie looks and feels like an Apple-designed iPhone app. Better, in some ways.

All that said, Textie comes free with one of the most beautiful implementations of Fusion Ads that you ever did see. (What product would be complete without?) Which brings us to our next topic of interest for today…

At long last, we are officially launching our Touch Network. Ever since the iPhone came out, it’s been a bit of a dream of mine to integrate our ads into the iPhone applications that we use everyday. (In fact, Loren Brichter first approached us about putting Fusion Ads in Tweetie for iPhone before Tweetie for Mac was even a twinkle in his eye.)

We’ve seen many third-party iPhone advertising solutions over the last couple years — the good, the bad, and the ugly. But none of those methods did justice to how we felt iPhone advertising should be done.

As an iPhone user going on two years now, there aren’t many things that I actually purchase on my iPhone. To be completely honest, living out in the boondogs of Texas with sketchy service has trained me to Instapaper interesting links for later, rather than painfully waiting to load them over the Edge network.

As a result, I’ve grown to stop clicking on ads in iPhone applications.

The only thing I purchase on my iPhone (besides, admittedly, Chipotle on occasion) are iPhone apps. Plain and simple. Let’s face it, no one really wants to be making online accounts or entering credit card details on their phone. To us, “I’ve already got the account, you’ve already got my credit card, now just give me the app” sounded like a better deal.

At the same time, the AppStore has exploded in popularity, and aside from getting on the Top 50 list or being featured by Apple, it’s hard for great iPhone apps and hard working devs to get recognized for their work. We want our Touch network to be the go-to marketplace for iPhone developers looking to get their name out directly to their users in a classy and affordable way.

It’s the same tasteful Fusion ads, specifically done for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Only iPhone developers can advertise on the touch network. There’s only one ad per app, custom and natively integrated into each app. Tapping on the ad will take you directly to the AppStore. Every time. Check out the app in more detail and purchase with another tap.

The most interesting observation I’ve made while watching my own usage patterns is how often I will click a Fusion ad on my iPhone simply because of consistency — I know what to expect, every time. Shawn Blanc said it best during one conference call, “It doesn’t even feel like an ad. Just a little friend that’s peeking down, waiting to share something new with me.”

I think that sums up what we believe at Fusion — gentle recommendations over pushy ads.

Aside: for those wondering about the iPad, due to the nature of the device we’ve decided to classify it as a “desktop” device. Therefore, iPad apps will run the same ads as the main Creative network.

Advertisers: if you’re wanting to jump on early, we’re offering 25% off your campaign if you book with us by May 7th.

As for iPhone developers wanting to carry Fusion ads, while we’re still invitation-only, the fact of the matter is we only have a handful of applications on our own devices that we know and use and love. We’re looking for more high-quality iPhone and iPod Touch apps that would work well under an ad-supported / premium version model.

If that’s you (or someone you know) we want to hear about it. Feel free to shoot us an email and we’ll start talking business.

As soon as Apple announced their take on an advertising platform, I received emails and texts asking how we were going to respond. Would we be willing to compete with such a behemoth company?

To be honest, I don’t think iAds affects us at all.

We think Apple has done a great job at bringing mainstream advertising to the iPhone in a very big way. But they are going after a drastically different market than we are. In fact, their approach is different in almost every way. They believe in serving ads en masse that are both fun and interactive. We believe in serving ads exclusively that are simple and targeted. They believe in taking over the whole screen and “immersing you in the ad.” We believe in making the ad as unobtrusive and polite as possible.

It’s a different way of looking at things. I have no doubt that Apple will thrive and make loads of money with iAds, but at the same time, I don’t see why we can’t do the same. We think there’s room for both companies to operate side by side successfully.

If anything, iAds has been good for the iPhone development community at large as it’s generated a lot more interest among developers to create free, ad-supported versions of their applications.

We’re just looking for the iPhone developers that feel the same way as us.

We think we’ve got something really special, and we’re excited to see where it’s going to go.

« Hello 2010

New Friends »