Apple has lost another senior member of staff. According to the Wall Street Journal’s All Things Digital, its vice president of mobile advertising, Andy Miller, will leave the company to join venture capital firm, Highland Capital.
Miller co-founded Quattro Wireless in 2006 and had funding from Highland Capital. Apple bought Quattro for $275m last year. At the time of the acquisition, Steve Jobs said: ‘We tried to buy a company named AdMob, but Google came in and snatched them from us. So we bought Quattro, and they are teaching us. We are making ads that are different than anything I’ve ever seen.’
Those ads became iAd, Apple’s advertising platform for iOS. It was launched a year ago but has faced stiff competition from Google and Facebook, among others. Unlike many other services, iAd’s minimum spend is high. Clients must have a budget of at least $500,000, although that figure was cut in half, from $1m in February. That was seen as an attempt to make the platform more attractive to advertisers, after a disappointing start.
At the time, All Things Digital reported: ‘Though Apple claims more than 60 successful brand campaigns for iAds and a 100 percent renewal rate, some developers feel the platform has been slow to gain traction.’
