According to a letter sent to developers on Tuesday inviting them to an online session to persuade them to buy ads, Apple intends to introduce new ad “placements” as soon as the holiday season.
The new advertisements mark a considerable expansion of Apple’s App Store-focused advertising inventory. Apple’s advertising inventory has recently been restricted to one unit on the search results page and one unit on the App Store’s Search tab.
“With new opportunities coming to Apple Search Ads, you can promote your apps across the App Store to engage even more customers this holiday season,” according to the message, which was published by the creator of Mobile Dev Memo, Eric Seufert, and confirmed to CNBC by a developer who received the offer.
The note to developers made no mention of where the additional ad positions will be made available, but in July Apple revealed plans to expand its menu by adding an advertisement to the Today tab, which serves as the Software Store’s home page, and another sponsored advertisement to app product pages under the heading “You Might Also Like.”
“Apple Search Ads provides opportunities for developers of all sizes to grow their business. Like our other advertising offerings, these new ad placements are built upon the same foundation—they will only contain content from apps’ approved App Store product pages, and will adhere to the same rigorous privacy standards,” a spokesman for Apple told CNBC.
The rise in inventory coincides with growing scrutiny of Apple’s advertising business.
In addition to warranties, search engine licencing, App Store sales, and online subscription revenue, Apple’s advertising revenue is listed as a component of its services business. Apple’s services revenue in 2021 was above $68 billion.
Wamsi Mohan, an analyst at Bank of America, predicted in July that Apple might make $5 billion in advertising revenue in 2022 only from Apple Search Ads.
Apple announced App Tracking Transparency (ATT) in 2021 to provide iPhone consumers the choice of sharing or not sharing a specific ID with app developers. The majority of iPhone users opt not to share, which makes it difficult for internet advertisers to precisely track the effectiveness of their adverts.
Apple claims it changed as a result of its corporate stance on customer privacy. It enables its own customers to stop Apple from utilizing data like account information and past purchases to target search advertisements and to disable Apple’s tailored ads on the App Store. 78% of users disable Apple’s personal advertisements, which is comparable to certain estimates of the percentage of users that disable ATT.
Advertising firms, such as Facebook parent company Meta, have criticized ATT for being anticompetitive and self-serving. Apple’s shift, according to Meta, might cost it $10 billion this year.
