Apple to reportedly exit ad business, hand over iAd management to publishers

Nearly six years after its debut, Apple is reportedly planning to take a much less active role in its in-house iAd advertising platform, as it intends to hand over ad management duties — and revenue — to publishers in the near future.

Apple will dissolve the current iAd sales team and reconfigure the platform as an automated service, leaving advertisement creation, sales and management to publishers as part of the strategic shift, reports BuzzFeed News. In exchange, Apple will no longer charge its usual 30 percent fee, meaning publishers that manage their own iAds keep all revenue the content generates.

"It's just not something we're good at," an unnamed source said of the advertisement game.

Details of the impending wind down are sparse, though BuzzFeed believes initial steps might be taken as soon as this week. Apple will buy out sales team contracts, but the fate of firms currently handling programmatic ad buying services is less clear.

"The big publishing groups will just fold programmatic buys into the stuff they're selling across all their properties," one source said.

The news is somewhat in line with recent comments from Apple SVP of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue, who said the company is working on a self-service ad-buying tool for publishers serving content through the iOS 9 News app. That service is expected to launch in the next two months.

In spite of a hyped launch in 2010, iAd failed to become the end-all in-app ad platform Apple was looking to build. Early reports saw iAd as abillion dollar opportunity, while others projected iAd revenue to one day account for 8 percent of Apple's stock value. Today's report cited data from EMarketer showing iAd's take of the mobile advertising space was a mere 5.1 percent in 2015, compared to Google's 9.5 percent and Facebook's 37.9 percent.

22 Comments

rogifan_old 725 comments · 9 Years

About 8 years ago

Ha, in 2010 Yahoo CEO predicted iAd would fail.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-yahoo-idUSTRE68E42R20100916

"That's going to fall apart for them," Bartz said about Apple's iAd service. "Advertisers are not going to have that type of control over them. Apple wants total control over those ads."

foggyhill 4767 comments · 10 Years

rogifan_old said:

Ha, in 2010 Yahoo CEO predicted iAd would fail.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-yahoo-idUSTRE68E42R20100916

"That's going to fall apart for them," Bartz said about Apple's iAd service. "Advertisers are not going to have that type of control over them. Apple wants total control over those ads."

Maybe if Yahoo's CEO's insight on his own company was as good they wouldn't be where they are....

Like Sog said, the fact that you couldn't micro-target people with IAd made it less interesting to advertisers (and more interesting to phone buyers....).
So, I think Apple made the right call anyway.

foggyhill said:

rogifan_old said:

Ha, in 2010 Yahoo CEO predicted iAd would fail.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-yahoo-idUSTRE68E42R20100916

"That's going to fall apart for them," Bartz said about Apple's iAd service. "Advertisers are not going to have that type of control over them. Apple wants total control over those ads."

Maybe if Yahoo's CEO's insight on his own company was as good they wouldn't be where they are....

Like Sog said, the fact that you couldn't micro-target people with IAd made it less interesting to advertisers (and more interesting to phone buyers....).
So, I think Apple made the right call anyway.

So what happens now since iAd isn't going away? Are we the product in apps or Apple News publishers that use the iAd platform?

genovelle 1481 comments · 16 Years

sog35 said:

rogifan_old said:

Ha, in 2010 Yahoo CEO predicted iAd would fail.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-yahoo-idUSTRE68E42R20100916

"That's going to fall apart for them," Bartz said about Apple's iAd service. "Advertisers are not going to have that type of control over them. Apple wants total control over those ads."

The only reason why it failed is because Apple was not willing to sacrifice user privacy. To be sucessful at ads you need to be willing to make the customer the product like Google does.

I still think that 5% of the mobile ad market when market when you only have 9 or 10% of the phone market globally is great. Also considering this is not their primary source of income. 9.5% for Google is a problem. The world is moving to mobile and Facebook is killing them.

curtis hannah 1834 comments · 12 Years

genovelle said:

sog35 said:

The only reason why it failed is because Apple was not willing to sacrifice user privacy. To be sucessful at ads you need to be willing to make the customer the product like Google does.

I still think that 5% of the mobile ad market when market when you only have 9 or 10% of the phone market globally is great. Also considering this is not their primary source of income. 9.5% for Google is a problem. The world is moving to mobile and Facebook is killing them.

That is what I'm thinking, considering that it is an apple only service that makes that portion, it's pretty good.