Back in August, it was reported that Apple would soon expand its ad business in order to achieve double-digit growth from its current revenue of $4 billion per year, effectivity tripling the number. The tech giant has started doing this by displaying more ads in its stock iOS apps like Stocks, News, and TV+ as well as in the App Store.
Apple works on increasing revenue from ad business
Last year, the tech giant launched App Tracking Transparency, a feature that allows users to decide whether developers can track them across other apps and websites. The feature caused many companies to lose out on revenue generation from ads. For huge companies like Meta, Snapchat, and Twitter, the loss in revenue so far has been in the range of billions. Smaller developers were affected by the framework as well.
Now, Apple plans to significantly expand its advertising business. It is going to do this by displaying ads inside stock iOS apps such as News, Stocks as well as the App Store across the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Apple has also added ads inside TV+ to advertise its “Friday Night Baseball” deal with Major League Baseball.
As for the App Store, ads will be displayed in the main Today tab and in a “You Might Also Like” section at the bottom of an individual app’s listing. “With a Today tab ad, your app can appear prominently on the front page of the App Store — making it some of the first content users see when they begin their App Store visit,” says a page on Apple’s website about App Store ads.
All ads in the App Store have a blue background with “Ad” written on them in white. The ads will start appearing for users from Tuesday, October 25 in all regions except China.
Previously, Apple only displayed ads in the App Stores when users searched for an app with advertisers depending on keywords, similar to Google Search ads. However, they were not displayed in the Today tab.
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman previously revealed that Apple wanted to triple its advertising revenue to $10 billion per year, up from $4 billion. The journalist today said that Apple plans to expand search ads to Maps before adding them to Apple Books and Apple Podcasts.
The revenue generated through the ads will be included in Apple’s Services unit, its largest division by revenue. This unit includes the App Store, iCloud, Apple Music, Fitness+, AppleCare+, Apple TV+, Apple News+, Apple Arcade, Apple One, Apple Pay, and more.
In addition, Gurman says that Apple TV+ could generate more revenue from advertising if the tech giant starts offering multiple tiers. Competitors of Apple’s streaming service, Netflix and Disney+ also added ad-supported tiers to their services this year.
