Apple is growing an ad business

The Future. Apple is reportedly diving headfirst into the ad business with a bottom-up platform to bring ads to its services ecosystem. The company is paying special attention to bringing ads to its original programming on AppleTV+, which could put the streamer in direct competition with Netflix’s and Disney+’s own ad-tier rollouts. Looks like advertisers aren’t going to be short of options in 2023.

Seed in the shows
Even Apple isn’t immune to Madison Ave.’s money.

• According to Digiday, Apple is reportedly creating an ad product that will encompass all of its services platforms, with a special focus on Apple TV+.
• With so much room for advertising on Apple TV+, Apple is doing what it has historically been opposed to — creating a demand-side platform (DSP), which is software that allows marketers to set up and manage an ad campaign easily.
• That gives Apple less control over the advertising than they are typically used to, but ads already bring in $4 billion annually (it has ads on the App Store and Apple News), and the money a DSP can bring may be too good to pass up.

The ads would only run on content “owned and operated” by Apple, such as shows like Ted Lasso, Mosquito Coast, and The Afterparty.

Ads in beta
Talks have been led by VP of ad platforms Todd Teresi, who has already been meeting with holding company execs to prepare for a potential early 2023 launch.

But according to one executive who had a meeting with him, “[Teresi] also made it very clear that Apple will do nothing unless one, there’s a significant opportunity, and two, they would never do anything to jeopardize the relationship they have with their consumers.”

In other words, like many Apple experiments, nothing is a go until Apple itself announces it.