Apple Has Reportedly Explored Showing Ads in Apple Maps

As Apple is currently looking to increase its ad revenue, the company could be planning to bring ads to more places beyond its App Store, News, and Stock apps. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, introducing search ads to Apple Maps could be one of the most obvious choices to expand the company’s advertising business.

“The effort to add search ads to Apple Maps has already been explored internally,” Gurman wrote. “Such a feature would probably work similarly to search ads in the App Store. For instance, a Japanese restaurant could pay money to rank at the top of local listings when users searched for “sushi.”

In addition to Maps, the reporter also believes that Apple could easily bring search ads to its other digital storefronts, including the Books and Podcasts apps. Similarly, publishers could just pay Apple to have their content rank higher in search results.

Apple TV+, which remains one of the most affordable streaming services at $4.99 could also grow its userbase by introducing an ad-supported tier. This is something Disney+ will do later this year, with Netflix to follow in 2023.

As noted by Gurman, one thing that may signal Apple’s increased focus on its ad business is the fact that Todd Teresi, the VP of Apple’s ad group now reports directly to Eddy Cue, Apple’s SVP of Services. “Inside the ads group, Teresi has talked up expanding the business significantly. It’s generating about $4 billion in revenue annually, and he wants to increase that to the double digits,” the report reads.

Do you think Apple adding search ads to its Maps app would be bad for users? Amazon went a big step further by showing users of Fire TV devices seven-second “Welcome Screen” ads when they launch the platform’s FreeVee app.