William Gallagher
Brace yourself for wildly over-the-top clickbait adverts in Apple News and the Apple Stocks app, as Apple hands over placing ads to the chumbox firm, Taboola.
Internet services need advertising to survive, and that's true even for Apple, which famously makes most of its income from iPhones and Macs. Consequently, Apple has an ad sales business, and in fact that has benefitted from how its privacy rules hinder rivals.
As part of its apparent moves to grow that business, though, Axios says that Apple has agreed a deal with Taboola. This firm is best known for what are called chumbox ads, where a trio of images and clickbait headlines often sit at the end of an article.
It's not clear whether the deal with Taboola is exclusive. It's possible that the deal may instead be the common practice where a firm such as Apple sells ads itself but then uses another such firm to fill in any gaps.
Whether it tops up Apple's ad sales or entirely runs the ads on both Apple News and Apple Stocks, any one advert will usually be run without Apple having to approve it. Instead, Apple is hopefully likely to use the chumbox firm's Taboola Select program for large companies, which limits ads to what are deemed to be premium publishers.
This deal currently covers adverts in Apple News and the Stocks app, but it's only part of Apple's expanding advertising business. As well as examining ads on Apple TV+, the company has reportedly been looking at how to use AI to optimize ads on the App Store.
Christine McKee
Marko Zivkovic
Wesley Hilliard
Malcolm Owen
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10 Comments
I already don't use News.
By all means leverage that AI smartness to optimize yourself right out of $400+ dollars per year from my family.
I absolutely despise these ads and use paid ad blockers specifically because of their ads. I really hope Apple doesn't ruin their products by going down this path. Aside from the fact that I am a paid subscriber to Apple News, Taboola ads are gross and never reflect the product / service depicted. They are gross clickbait at best and it's too bad people click on them. So glad Safari has reader view for crap like this.
Paid AppleNews should be ad free.