Apple Is Reportedly Eyeing the Ad Business (cnbc.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: The Wall Street Journal has published a new report detailing one thing we might expect to see on stage at WWDC next week: a digital ad platform expansion. According to the Journal, Apple has been in talks with major apps including Snapchat and Pinterest about the project: "Over the past year, Apple has met with Snap Inc., Pinterest Inc. and other companies about participating in an Apple network that would distribute ads across their collective apps, the people said. Apple would share revenue with the apps displaying the ads, with the split varying from app to app, they said."

The report adds that the new ad effort would expand on the "nearly $1 billion" business of search ads, which it introduced to the App Store in 2016. In addition to app ads being display in search results in the App Store, developers could include advertisements in search results within their own apps: "Under the concept discussed internally and raised with potential partners, users searching in Pinterest's app for 'drapes' might turn up an ad distributed by Apple for an interior-design app, or Snap users searching for 'NFL' might see an ad for a ticket-reseller app, one of the people said."

Comments

Greedy!

[Actually, I do RTFA]

They're already like the 3rd most valuable company. I can understand why they might want to follow the lead of the two beating them (Google/MS) into the world of ads. But they don't seem to recognize that their selling point, and the reason people pay a premium, is for privacy/lack of ads. Hell, Android apps are monetized by ads, Apple apps are monetized by charges.

Apple needs to be extremely careful

[hdyoung]

Apple should tread very, very carefully here. One of the main reasons that I still use Apple products - I feel that Apple treats it's customers better than the other tech giants. They monetize their customers less. They hold themselves to a higher standard of service and privacy. I'm sure someone will call me a paid shill, but think about how they compare to Google, Facebook and the others. The other tech giants monetize every keystroke and mouseclick. The other tech giants make their customer info available to any ad company with a checkbook or anyone with the motivation to scrape the web. I can't really blame them. They provide services and they have to make revenue somewhere. They aren't really sneaky about what they do with their customer info. Everyone knows it and accepts it to get the freebies.

I'll go with Apple for hardware and services, and skip Facebook entirely. Unfortunately, there's no good way to get around Google and Amazon. Apple is practically the last bastion of any real level of privacy when it comes to the tech giants. Even if that level isn't all that great, at least it's something. I think that there's a grain of truth to the idea that Apple charges a premium for its hardware so it doesn't have to make money in other ways.

As far as I'm concerned, this has become the main distinction for Apple. Their product design used to be way ahead of the others, but that gap has narrowed quite a bit in the last few years. If Apple monetizes me for ad sales, it'll become just another tech company as far as I'm concerned. At that point, I'll just save the several hundred dollars and my next phone or tablet can be Android. They won't miss me, but my bank account will wind up slightly larger.