Smart App Banners

The new version of Mobile Safari that ships with iOS 6 has a great new feature for app publishers: Smart App Banners.

When a user visits your site in Mobile Safari on iOS, you can now add a pop-up banner to promote your iOS app, which includes a direct link to the app in the App Store and optionally your iTunes affiliate information. David Smith has a great overview on his blog, and you can find all the details of Smart App Banners in Apple's Safari Web Content Guide on the Apple developer site.

Though I doubt that this will do away with all those annoying full-page "get our iPad app" pop-ups, I hope that at least some sites will start to use this instead. Thanks Apple for providing something to help sites promote their apps in a less annoying way.