Apple has announced that it will reject applications using location primarily for ad targeting. Yesterday, Apple posted an update to its “News and Announcements” Dev Center about Apple CoreLocation technology:

If your app uses location-based information primarily to enable mobile advertisers to deliver targeted ads based on a user’s location, your app will be returned to you by the App Store Review Team for modification before it can be posted to the App Store.

Both Craig Hockenberry (inventor of Twitterific) and Gizmodo opine that this is a preliminary move to make space for Apple’s own answer to mobile advertising, which is plausible given Apple’s recent acquisition of Quattro for $275 million.

Location is extremely valuable data with regard to ad targeting, but it’s not the only valuable data. If you’re walking down a street with two restaurants and a shoe store, you could reasonably be served an ad for dinner specials and shoe repair. But if you’ve just eaten and you’re wearing new shoes, those ads aren’t relevant.

The only ad that could beat ads solely targeted on location is one that’s also relevant to your interests. Based on the results we’ve seen at 140 Proof, combining persona targeting with location targeting is a much more successful approach. The fact that Twitter ads are social too is a huge win for brands. (This isn’t to say that Apple wouldn’t target ads based on personas, since Apple is in the best position to do so. It’s conceivable that they have access to rich mines of behavior and purchase data on all their iPhone and App Store customers.) So knowing only where you are isn’t quite as useful as also knowing who you are.

Major platforms are fighting hard to claim and keep the lead in the mobile ad space. For more details on that, try the Business Week article “Apple vs. Google.”