Editco.net

iAd is a mobile advertising platform that allows ads in Apple apps, so you can click on an ad or watch a video within the app without flipping back to advertiser's website.

To date there are 185,000 Apple apps.

It seems to have been dreamt up by Quattro Wireless, which Apple bought for $300m in January, and Apple says 60 per cent of the revenues gained will go back to the app developer/publisher.

As such it's clearly going to attract numerous developers, publishers and advertisers. And be a direct challenge to Google which, at the moment, is hardly in the app market although it surely will be as it pushes its own Android phone and Chrome browser.

Some commentators are even saying that the expansion of the Apple ad platform signals the end of Google-style paid-for search.

And it won't escape anyone's attention that the bigger format iPad is a much better medium for ads than any of the mobiles currently on offer.

Whether or not users will welcome this barrage of commercial messages is another matter.

But Apple boss Steve Jobs looks as though he's succeeded in moving the goalposts again, this time as a media owner.