Dive Brief:

• Conceding that its iAd advertising sales business never really took hold in the marketplace, multiple sources have told BuzzFeed News that Apple is dropping the sales portion of iAd in favor of a more automated platform.
• IAd launched in 2010, but faced issues in terms of gaining marketplace traction, such as high cost and a high level of control and stewardship exerted by Apple over iAds.
• In its new incarnation, iAds will be created, sold and managed by publishers instead of Apple.

Dive Insight:

According to the sources who spoke with BuzzFeed, iAds sales team members will be offered buyouts, possibly as soon as this week. The iAds platform will be updated so that publishers can directly sell through it, and publishers will be allowed to keep 100% of the revenue generated through their ad sales.

An advertising industry source told BuzzFeed, "I think this is going to be great for publishers. It gives them direct dialogue with their customers as opposed to forcing them to go through an Apple middleman. Access will be more plentiful and easier to manage — theoretically."

Rubicon Project, MediaMath and other ad tech firms have been handling programmatic demand-side ad buying on the previous iAd platform, but are likely going to be left out of the new version since publishers can handle ad sales themselves.

"The big publishing groups will just fold programmatic buys into the stuff they’re selling across all their properties," a separate source said.