I once would say Apple will never re-enter advertising. I still don’t think they will, but their continued push to make a car makes me think that they have lost focus as a company. Instead I will say why they shouldn’t from a business perspective:
1. Apple is a premium brand. Ads aren’t premium. By beginning advertising as a service they destroy a key differentiator, erode trust, and ultimately open the door to a competitor.
2. Advertising as a Service at scale would require a whole new division of Apple with significant investment and resources. This takes away from other work. Other work would have to consider how advertising will fit into the product. There is an opportunity cost here.
3. As a company, Apple doesn’t have the stomach to be in the ad business. To make money on ads they would have to give creative freedom to advertisers to design their own ads and Apple will hate this. Advertisers will design ugly ads or write click bait headlines and they will constantly have to police this. Facebook tried to do this with their no text in photos rule and eventually just gave up. It is a never ending battle.
Apple is already advertising on the App Store, significantly hurting the experience. Excited to see how they're going to kill their biggest advantage over other platforms (basic respect for the user in certain areas).
I wish Apple would get out of the ads business. It cheapens the experience and their image as a premium brand, and surely they aren't making enough to make that worthwhile.
The only advertising that Apple does is keyword results in the App Store. A long time ago Apple tried an advertising network but they dropped that within a couple of years of launching it.
The fundamental problem here is that Apple’s revenues and culture come from selling excellent pay-to-use hardware, and the App Store’s revenues come from selling garbage pay-to-win games. So the advertising in iOS apps looks like the trashy “Crazy Eddie” hucksterism that it is, rather than Apple’s vision of tasteful ads for Porsche and Sonos. There’s a permanent disconnect that will prevent Apple from ever being the premier seller of ads on iOS.
I'm sure they can increase revenue but I'm not sure how Apple can build an ad empire by adding more ads to its own apps.
Apple canned their mobile ad platform and compared with Alphabet and Meta who's ads are peppered all over the web/search/facebook/instagram - the amount of impressions would be miniscule.
I really hope Apple doesn't launch an ad network for the web but it won't surprise me. That would be the point where I would move on from their products and ecosystem.
The App Store ads are atrocious enough when they already take 15-30% of the revenue. Plus those ads make for a bad user experience which Apple claims they are all about.
True, but it's depressing that Apple has decided to go down that path. They've gone from $0 ad revenue to $billions and are obviously intent on increasing that revenue even more.
Advertising on the App Store really broke my heart, I thought Apple just made money from us all by selling expensive, high quality devices and apps. These ads are a desperate attempt to now make something over and above by selling my attention, what a shame!
i bet the ads will be more relevant than the search results we normally get from the app store. Too bad they didn't try to just make the app store search better for users and not worry so much about promoted app ranking.
I remember Apple never communicating about its intentions clearly around its advertisement business. It was clear at the outset that its App Store business is lucrative (with all the details of its users). Will it kill the golden goose (aka consumers)? Most users have no real alternatives.
That Apple could do it doesn’t mean they will, and the article doesn’t present much actual evidence it will.
In Apple long-running saga with Ads it’s always seemed like Apple hates ads because it’s other companies content (and so priorities, aesthetic, and feel) jammed inside an Apple product. And Apple hates anything that ruins the Apple Experience :tm:
Paying to be the first App Store entry is great, because it’s Apple showing off the normal Apple content (an app card) within a search list of app cards.
But in an app that cuts to some cheap, ugly, non-Apple aesthetic ad - that’s pretty unappealing and ruins the Apple Experience.
It’s tougher to craft that Apple type experience while also selling out.
I think they’re also aware of the implicit value to their business of being the non-Ad driven eco-system. It’s all part of being premium. Selling to the users who also pay for Netflix premium, Hulu ad-free, etc. It’s built into their business model.
In some ways it’s been like that for years - PC laptops come coated in ads from the Intel Inside stickers and pre-installed crapwear, to the design and logos on the product boxes themselves.
I think Apple sorta, maybe wants Ads because it’s so lucrative, but also recognizes those challenges are real, and tough, and destroy their brand quickly.
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