As I wrote on Aug. 1, for a company that claims to want to protect its users from unwanted ads, Apple may be about to hack off some folks. As Mark Gurman notes in his latest Power On newsletter, Apple is going to, over time, significantly expand its own advertising business.
As he notes, the company’s advertising efforts today consist of display ads inside of its News and Stocks apps, as well as inside the App Store, across the iPhone, iPad and Mac. The App Store also has Google-like search ads. And more recently, Apple put advertising inside of TV+ for its “Friday Night Baseball” deal with Major League Baseball.
However, Gurman says the tech giant’s future ambitions are even broader. Gurman says that several months ago, Apple’s advertising teams gained a foothold within the company’s services organization. The ad group’s vice president in charge, Todd Teresi, has talked up expanding the business significantly. It’s generating about $4 billion in revenue annually, and he wants to increase that to the double digits.
Gurman believes that Apple will eventually expand search ads to Maps. It also will likely add them to digital storefronts like Apple Books and Apple Podcasts. And TV+ could generate more advertising with multiple tiers (just as Netflix Inc., Walt Disney Co. and Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. are doing with their streaming services
Gurman adds: I don’t anticipate Apple going back into the business of serving up ads inside of third-party apps—at least not soon. Apple tried and failed at that with iAd starting in 2010.
Any increase in ads from Apple seems like sheer greed to me. The company is one of the most profitable in the world. To increase its ad efforts while talking up user privacy seems like the wolf lurking about in sheep’s clothing to me.
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Gurman has a love/hate relationship with Apple, and most of his Apple posts are snarky…almost every app has advertisements and we are desensitized to most advertisements except the most offensive. It is part of doing business…Apple and every other front facing website and app needs revenue to pay for the work and investment that goes into them. If you really want to see adds, get an Android phone