Just last week, Apple announced an expansion of its App Store Search Ads program with two new ad placements in the iOS App Store.
Apple currently presents ads in apps like the App Store, News, and Stocks as well as more recent launches such as during Apple TV Friday Night Baseball streams. And recent accelerated hiring trends in the ads platform unit indicate that Apple’s advertising expansion is not slowing down, via Digiday.
Digiday says their sources say that hiring in the Ad Platforms division has risen significantly since the beginning of 2022. This is also reflected in the exec org chart. A report from May said that Apple Services group now has a dedicated exec, Todd Teresi, to focus on advertising-related initiatives.
Most notable, Digiday highlighted job listings that state Apple is building “the most privacy-forward, sophisticated demand side platform possible”.
A demand-side platform allows advertisers to set up automations that scale up campaigns based on performance indicator factors, aided by machine learning. As long as the platform is well-engineered, advertisers are satisfied and they spend more.
Demand-side platforms also do other things like help advertisers closely match with their intended audience demographics, and try out multiple variants of an ad campaign with dynamic A/B tests, and ultimately optimize and increase spending around the best-performing campaigns.
Creating a good DSP represents a significant investment of cost and engineering hours. It could be used to power Search Ads in the App Store, media placements like the aforementioned MLB display advertising (and other rumored live sports Apple is bidding on, like the NFL Sunday Ticket Package) and more.
It doesn’t seem that left-field to expect that Apple Search Ads will eventually escape the App Store app … and make their way into other parts of the Apple experience, like in Spotlight or Maps when searching for places to go.
In streaming television, advertising-supported content is becoming increasingly popular. Soon, all of Apple TV+’s competitors like Netflix and Disney+ will offer an ad-supported tier. It is possible Apple may want to offer its own reduced priced tier with ads to compete.
Long-time Apple observers will know that in 2010, Apple launched its own mobile banner ads solution for third-party developers to use, called iAd. iAd was a widespread failure and quietly discontinued a few years ago. But there’s always a chance Apple takes another stab at that market, to add to its growing pile of services revenue sources.
Apple has drawn criticism for expanding its ads initiatives whilst at the same cracking down on the abilities of third-party ad networks. The rollout of App Tracking Transparency has been an obvious win for consumers, but ad networks like Facebook and Snap have struggled to maintain the effectiveness of their ad platforms as a result, and has estimated to have cost the industry tens of billions of dollars in the last year. Apple’s definition of ‘tracking’ as third-party data sharing means its own Personalised Ads do not fall under the purview of ATT, as that is considered first-party data sharing.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
