Following speculation that emerged last fall, Apple has officially announced that it will start serving ads in Apple Maps. Ads will be shown alongside mapping search results, using a combination of location and contextual targeting. Apple won’t apply behavioral targeting based on signed-in users’ history.
From the user’s perspective, Ads will show up in two places. One will be on the map itself, geographically centered on a business location. These in-map units are marked with a small blue halo around the map pin. The other ad format will be list-based, appearing in Apple Maps’ Suggested Places section.
That second format will resemble what Apple has already done with sponsored results in App Store searches. As for eligibility, the ads program is available to businesses of all sizes, but they’ll need a profile in Apple Business Connect – which puts that program in a new light (more on that in a bit).
To maintain Apple’s privacy-first persona, it’s stressing that data about users’ interactions with ads won’t be associated in any way with their Apple account. All user data will stay on-device and isn’t stored by Apple nor shared with third parties. The program will kick off this summer in the U.S. and Canada.
True Apple Fashion
From the advertiser’s perspective, the new ad program lets them upload photos, write ad copy, and set budgets. In that sense, the UX will be similar to several established self-serve ad programs to prevent Apple from re-inventing the wheel, or forcing a learning curve on SMBs that raises adoption friction.
To that end, Apple Maps advertising will rely on a bidding process that’s familiar in search ads, and an auction-based pricing system. Campaigns will be performance-based in that advertisers only pay when actions are triggered, such as ad clicks/taps. This should de-risk adoption for price-sensitive SMBs.
In true Apple fashion, these baseline options are meant to be simple, while it offers tools for larger and more sophisticated advertisers to do advanced customization. Those include scheduling times that ads run, or targeting specific locations. Ads are targeted to users’ location or searched locations by default.
It’s also worth noting that all the above sits within a broader rollout for a product that Apple is calling Apple Business. In addition to advertising, this program brings several enterprise functions under one roof, such as email, data storage, managing business listings, and device management programs.
Reputational Cost
As noted, we saw this coming. The tipoff was Apple’s Business Connect – a program that encouraged businesses to establish profiles that they could use to manage their Apple Maps results. This was meant to keep Apple’s listings data updated. But it was also a precursor to the next logical step: mapvertising.
Though this was a logical progression, it likely wasn’t an easy decision for Apple. It could evenutally add $ billions in top-line revenue given Apple Maps installed base… but that could come at a cost. We’re talking about a reputational cost, as Apple will now have a perceived incentive to harvest user data.
Whether or not Apple acts on that incentive doesn’t matter: The damage in conflicts of interest isn’t in their actuality but in their perception. Apple is known as the privacy-safe player that isn’t incentivized for data misuse. This has so far engendered a trustworthy persona that contrasts the likes of Meta.
Protecting that reputation has made Apple cautious with ad monetization. The majority of its ad revenue so far is from sponsored results in App Store searches. But there are greater sensitivities in mapping and all things local. So we’ll see if this reputation-for-revenue tradeoff ends up working in Apple’s favor.
