At D8, Steve Jobs said that Apple's move to block outside ad agencies from collecting user information was made to protect user privacy, not to box out the competition. He promised that Apple would allow other advertising networks to collect user statistics, effectively letting them compete with Apple's own iAd.
But there's a stipulation in the revised iOS terms precluding non-independent advertisers from collecting such data. Here's the relevant passage:
3.3.9 You and Your Applications may not collect, use, or disclose to any third party, user or device data without prior user consent, and then only under the following conditions:
- The collection, use or disclosure is necessary in order to provide a service or function that is directly relevant to the use of the Application. For example, without Apple's prior written consent, You may not use third party analytics software in Your Application to collect and send device data to a third party for aggregation, processing, or analysis.
- The collection, use or disclosure is for the purpose of serving advertising to Your Application; is provided to an independent advertising service provider whose primary business is serving mobile ads (for example, an advertising service provider owned by or affiliated with a developer or distributor of mobile devices, mobile operating systems or development environments other than Apple would not qualify as independent); and the disclosure is limited to UDID, user location data, and other data specifically designated by Apple as available for advertising purposes.
An advertising service provider owned by or affiliated with a developer or distributor of mobile devices? Yep, that's sounding a lot like Google's AdMob. The little guys will surely be happy to seed their into Apple's app ecosystem, but iAd's biggest competitor, AdMob, could well be locked out. Jobs wasn't lying when he said that iOS would open up to other advertising networks, he just wasn't quite telling the entire truth. [AllThingsD via Apple Insider via Engadget]