Joshua Schnell, September 19, 2012
Tired of getting a fullscreen advertisement for iPhone and iPad apps from your favorite websites every time you log on from your iOS device of choice? Sure, site owners let you dismiss the popup, but the next time you visit your favorite site, they’ll be right back in your face. Apple has cured this behavior with Smart App Banners in iOS 6. What are Smart App Banners?
Instead of being inundated with app download requests, site owners and web services can put up a nifty banner on top of their website that shows off information from the App Store including price (download link), app name, and a general user rating scale on mobile websites from within Safari for iOS. But here’s the best part — it floats at the top of the screen, and it doesn’t obscure the website you’re visiting. Heck, the banner even has a nice little x to close it out.
This is win-win-win, folks. It’s a win for Apple because it likely means more app downloads. It’s a win for site owners because it means getting customers further integrated with your service. It’s a win for customers because previous app ads sucked hard, and were plenty annoying to deal with.
This isn’t a feature that’ll blow your mind and change your life, but it’s certainly one that’s going to save you plenty of headache.
So, how do you install these banners?
First, you need an app in the App Store, and it needs to already be approved. I’m no app developer, but according to the founder of Forers, Petr Kutálek, it’s as simple as including these two snippets:
1.) On Your Website: “<meta name=”apple-itunes-app” content=”app-id=123456789
2.) In Your App: (BOOL)application:(UIApplication *)application openURL:(NSURL *)url sourceApplication:(NSString *)sourceApplication annotation:(id)annotation; in your iOS application.
Currently, we’re not sure if you can have multiple smart app banners being served up at one time. If you’re a developer and have some insights, hit us up on Twitter.
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