On Apple Watch Ads And Distractions
The human attention span has become the world’s most valuable real estate. Wily marketers, peddlers, entertainers and profiteers are trying to insert themselves into our attention span – and thus our consumer behavior – in ever smaller but more ubiquitous spots. Our surfing, reading, shopping, working and, worst, our social lives – everything we do with these addictive devices – are infiltrated.
I’ll be damned if I let them start putting ads and distractions on my watch.
I really doubt that Apple Watch ads are going to be a visible part of the equation. Apple, unlike Google, is a hardware company, and while there’s money to be made serving comprehensive targeted ads across its devices, there’s not enough money to be made doing so. Remember iAds? Apple’s been there, done that, and ate their hat. The new Apple Watch App Store is going to be curated heavily, and adware is almost certainly right out. Obviously, I haven’t seen a single ad pop up in our Apps showcase, but this is the key part: I haven’t seen where a developer could even squeeze one in without squeezing users out.
To Meyer’s qualms about distractions on his watch, once the advertisement bloat is eliminated (or, in this case, is absent from the start), would customized notifications and Glances really prove all that distracting? One of the most compelling use cases that has me on board for Apple’s first-generation wearable is precisely the mechanism by which the thing allows me to limit my distractions. I choose what gets my immediate attention, and I ignore the rest. For the most part, I already do that now with iPhone, but it’s not a particularly reliable system. Stuff falls through the cracks. And frankly, when you’re waiting on an important message, email, or call, everything else you might be doing in the meantime is the distraction.
Apple Watch is the un-distraction.