14 DAY TRIAL // Apple today offers iAd Producer 4.2 for advertisers looking to monetize products with vibrant iAds on iPhone and iPad, adding all-new abilities like support for creating full-screen iPhone banners and other cool stuff. The download is made not through the Mac App Store, but through Apple’s own developer portal.
“Make ads richer – and your job simpler with iAd Producer,” says Apple. “Swipe, pinch and spin your vision into life with easy-to-execute animations and effects.”
According to the Mac maker, advertisers are encouraged to get started with iAd Blueprints, “a set of templates based on best practices that bring the structure of your ad together. When you’re ready, take your ad for a test drive with iAd Producer’s on-device Preview ensuring flawless implementation. Creativity has never been this painless.”
iAd Producer features a single-window interface for editing layouts and settings, project templates with pre-built structure (banners, splash pages, menus), a range of interactive elements to use in the ad, object animation tools, JavaScript code editing and debugging, and a simulator to see how the final ad will run on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.
Essentially an ad-making tool for designing and assembling rich interactive media without any programming skills, iAd Producer contains a number of enhancements and fixes in its latest release (version 4.2).
Ad creators are now offered full support for making full-screen iPhone banners and for uploading iAd Producer projects to iAd Workbench, folder reorganization in the Assets sidebar, and miscellaneous fixes and improvements across the board.
Those who’ve been having trouble with previous versions will notice a change in performance, while any known issues that customers have reported should be gone.
Apple boasts that iAds are positioned for guaranteed success thanks to the vast customer base with credit cards on file.
“Whether you’re an app developer or a filmmaker, a small business owner or an experienced advertiser, reaching the people most likely to be interested in your product is key. With insights from over a half-billion validated iTunes accounts and billions of transactions, nobody knows Apple customers like iAd.”
Using iAd Workbench, advertisers can either target customers by defining sets of criteria (language, age, geography), or have the tool automatically find the best audience for their product (best suited for beginners).
iAd Workbench further enables advertisers to launch a campaign, define the amount they want to pay based on cost-per-click, manage campaigns from a handy Dashboard, and make edits and optimize the campaigns at any given time.
Apple offers these perks across a total of 14 countries: the United States, Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Ireland, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
The iAd platforms call for OS X Mavericks and Safari, Windows XP and Mozilla Firefox, Windows 7 and Google Chrome. Interested parties can also download a set of creative specifications to guide them in the production of banner and video ads for iAd Workbench campaigns.