Apple apparently senses the next big deal. According to reports, the US company wants to place more advertising on the iPhone and iPad in the future. Yet Apple only restricted the advertising options for other companies last year. A contradiction?
In search of new sources of revenue, Apple is apparently planning to show more advertising on the iPhone and iPad. Last year, the U.S. company actually introduced a function that is supposed to limit advertising on Apple devices.
With the so-called App Tracking Transparency (ATT), users can decide whether app operators can track their usage behavior via other applications and websites. The measure shook the online advertising industry at the time.
App tracking transparency causes massive drop in sales
Since then, many companies have had to do without valuable data that was often the basis for their advertisements. This, in turn, caused massive revenue losses for some advertisers.
At that time, Apple still let itself be celebrated as a data protector. However, as the news agency Bloomberg reports, the US company now wants to significantly expand its own ads on the iPhone and iPad. Against the background of the ATT function, this seems almost contradictory – but one thing after the other.
Apple wants to show more ads on the iPhone and iPad
Up to now, Apple has primarily displayed ads on the iPhone and iPad in its in-house apps “News” and “Stocks”. In its App Store, the company also advertises its own apps. Both are usually in the form of display ads.
Publishers in the news app, in turn, receive a financial stake of an unknown amount. But even if Apple’s advertising is still limited, the advertising business represents a significant difference from a time when Steve Jobs announced that there would be no advertising on Apple devices. That was in 2011.
Now Apple wants to expand its advertising business further. An ironic detail: The U.S. company relies on data from other services to decide on corresponding ads. That doesn’t sound like a particularly high level of data protection.
Is Apple gaining an advantage over the competition?
Apple users can deactivate ad personalization, but the company’s advertising system still uses data such as identities, device type and usage behavior. Unlike other advertisers who are subject to the ATT, Apple does not have to ask its users for permission via a pop-up message.
According to Apple, this is because the company does not track its users via other providers. So far, Apple’s advertising business in this area has been limited to ads within iOS Search, the App Store, and the company’s own apps “News” and “Stocks.
Will Apple soon display ads in the “Maps,” “Books” and “Podcasts” apps?
According to Bloomberg, however, the company wants to expand this sector significantly. According to the report, Apple wants to triple its revenue in this area with the help of advertising on the iPhone and iPad. For example, an expansion of advertisements to the company’s own map service is conceivable.
Another possibility is for Apple to pay publishers to advertise their products in Apple’s “Books” and “Podcasts” apps. However, the question will be whether Apple users, who often attach great importance to the issue of data protection, are willing to accept more advertising.
