Apple’s ad business has had a stop-start existence, but it is now set to take off.
According to Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman, Apple is considering considerably expanding its ad business. The company has previously investigated putting advertisements to the iPhone’s Maps app internally, and more potential expansions are in the works.
The recent modification to the organization’s reporting structure could be a contributing factor in the shift: Todd Teresi, Apple’s vice president of advertising, started directly reporting to Apple services chief Eddie Cue a few months ago, Gurman said in his email newsletter this week. Teresi intends to boost Apple’s advertising revenue from its current level of $4 billion yearly to billions in the double digits, the author further stated.
Advertising is already a component of Apple’s strategy, as noted by Gurman, but it is restricted in scope and to specific locations. The Stocks and News apps have the most conventional adverts of any Apple-produced app. Display advertising, both outside and inside of stories, are present there exactly like they are on news websites.
Within the App Store, Apple also has a thriving advertising business that lets app developers buy prominent placement in search result lists. Additionally, the business recently started running advertisements on its Apple TV service, but only during Friday Night Baseball.
However, Gurman predicts that Apple’s advertising will expand into new areas. For instance, in the App Store, advertisements will appear on pages listing specific apps as well as the Today homepage and curated search results.
Additionally, Apple may add adverts to the Books and Podcasts apps, or even expand TV advertising to include programming other than sports with new subscription tiers similar to Hulu or Disney+.
Apple has been involved with advertising in some capacity for a very long time, but not all of its efforts have been fruitful. In 2010, Apple unveiled iAd, a network that other app developers could use to integrate advertisements into their own programs. After Apple stopped iAd in 2016, iPhone and iPad app developers turned to the ad networks of other businesses.
More recently, Apple introduced the App Tracking Transparency policy, which required all third-party apps to get users’ consent before employing specific tracking methods that collected and cross-referenced users’ data across different apps, throwing a wrench in the works of many of those ad networks.
Apple’s own apps are exempt from having to show the same permission requests because they do not utilize those exact tracking techniques.
When Apple again develops its own offerings, neither Apple nor the Bloomberg email made any mention of whether Apple intends to reverse course on that.
