Good morning, marketers, will ads in iOS push notifications affect mobile marketing? Apple has changed its App Store guidelines to allow push notifications to be used for marketing and advertising. This is a reversal of a previous policy that prohibited notifications for being used for direct marketing purposes. Apple’s new guidelines require app developers to “provide a method in [the] app for a user to opt-out from receiving such messages.” However, take heed: If push ads and “informational” notifications are co-mingled, and a user opts-out because of too many or irrelevant ads, it could kill the publisher’s ability to send any notifications. Ultimately we will need to be careful about the promotional notifications sent to our users. Developers and mobile publishers should be transparent about introducing ads into push notifications. If the publisher is clear and takes care to only deliver relevant or personalized ads, the new capability might work extremely well. But sloppy or thoughtless execution, or spam, will almost guarantee failure. Keep scrolling for more news, including a look at how app install ad spend is on the rise plus our curated reading list to help you keep tabs on the industry. Taylor Peterson, Deputy Editor |