After iAd's death, Apple will move Apple News ad sales to NBCUniversal — report

Apple is shunting responsibility for the ads seen on Apple News to NBCUniversal's ad sales department, and is keeping all other details of the now defunct iAd service intact for content producers, according to a recent report.

According to Re/Code, NBCUniversal sales head Linda Yaccarino has sent a letter to her staff alerting them to the deal, and annoucing the creation of a sales group for advertisement sales on Apple News.

Publishers can still sell their own advertisements, and will retain 100% of the revenue generated from those ads. Reportedly, ads sold by NBCUniversal will be split with the same 70% of generated revenue going to the content producer, and 30% to NBCUniversal.

Rumors started circulating right after Apple announced the closure of the service that a third party might take over the sales for the program. The shift will allegedly happen in January.

Apple has refused comment on the report.

Apple's iAd program was announced in June of 2010, and launched on July 1, 2010 for the iPhone, and and iPad-specific version launched with iOS 4.2.1 in November 2010. After a few years of dropping the minimum amount of advertising from $500,000 to $50 required to utilize the service, Apple discontinued the program on June 30, 2016.

12 Comments

cali 3494 comments · 10 Years

About 8 years ago

How does any of this make sense?

Why does Apple continue to throw free ad money away? There has to be a contractor something where NBC Universal pays Apple for the free money(if plausible rumor is true).

Apple isn't fighting strong enough in this market. I want them to absolutely destroy Google or take at least half of the ad market.

If they could fix Apple News that would be a start.

robertwalter 276 comments · 9 Years

Probably good for devs but I hate the idea of Comcast anything...

rogifan_new 4297 comments · 9 Years

cali said:

How does any of this make sense?

Why does Apple continue to throw free ad money away? There has to be a contractor something where NBC Universal pays Apple for the free money(if plausible rumor is true).

Apple isn't fighting strong enough in this market. I want them to absolutely destroy Google or take at least half of the ad market.

If they could fix Apple News that would be a start.

I don't get why people want Apple to be in the ad business. Their views on privacy don't mesh wit advertising so they'd never be successful at it. Why does Google need to be crushed and isn't Facebook doing it anyway?

rogifan_new said:

cali said:

How does any of this make sense?

Why does Apple continue to throw free ad money away? There has to be a contractor something where NBC Universal pays Apple for the free money(if plausible rumor is true).

Apple isn't fighting strong enough in this market. I want them to absolutely destroy Google or take at least half of the ad market.

If they could fix Apple News that would be a start.

I don't get why people want Apple to be in the ad business. Their views on privacy don't mesh wit advertising so they'd never be successful at it. Why does Google need to be crushed and isn't Facebook doing it anyway?

They could do ads and be successful. It's not impossible. As a matter fact Siri could blow away anything the spyware competition is doing.

Google must be destroyed for the same reason Samsung should be destroyed. Don't pretend like it's a good company with any morals.

paxman 4729 comments · 17 Years

cali said:

If they could fix Apple News that would be a start.

Articles read through Apple News display the same kind of frustrating and intrusive advertising as seen on most news sites these days. I wish Apple would create a subscription based version that strips out all advertising leaving only news and editorials. Who'd have thunk reading 'real news' would have become such a chore? Has anyone tried RT? Any views on this?