There was once a time where first-party apps and experiences on Apple devices were exempt from advertisements. Other app marketplaces might happily show you ads, but not the App Store. Most news sites place ads in between every other paragraph, but Apple News was an ad-free experience. Say what you wanted about Apple and its products, but you certainly dealt with far fewer ads than on other platforms. Unfortunately, that’s no longer the case.
Apple has slowly made ads a part of its business model in order to boost revenue. You might have noticed them already while scrolling through stories in News, or when looking for a new game on the App Store. Even the Wallet app has blasted users with notifications when Apple TV has a new movie out. It’s an odd dichotomy: At a time when Apple’s MacBooks have never been an better overall value, the company’s software is beginning to feel less user-first than ever.
Those ads are only expanding, too. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple might be bringing more ads to its platforms “as early as next year.” If so, it seems the company will start with Apple Maps. Gurman says Apple will let restaurants and businesses pay a premium to float their results to the top of search. If you’ve searched for an app in Apple’s App Store lately, you should be familiar with this experience: When I open the search tab, for example, I see Instagram at the top of the page, with an “Ad” label beneath it, on top of two other non-advertised apps. Then, when I search for an app like Reddit, it appears second, beneath an ad placement for DuckDuckGo.
Gurman says Apple’s plan here is to make the experience better than other navigation apps that offer similar ads (I immediately think of Waze, which will show ads for restaurants and businesses whenever you stop the car) and will use AI to deliver more relevant ads to the user—though Apple’s AI tech leaves something to be desired.
I’m not sure this move will do much to push Apple Maps users towards other options. If the ads experience in Apple Maps really is on a similar level to the App Store, I imagine most users won’t pay much attention to it. They’ll either ignore any results that appear with that “Ad” label, or they’ll tap on the results that seem more relevant to their search. Plus, the most obvious alternatives have ads as well, so it’s not like someone sick of seeing ads in Apple Maps would necessarily find Google Maps or Waze more appealing.
Still, the principle of Apple adding more ads onto an inherently expensive experience leaves a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. I personally prefer other navigation apps to Apple Maps, but Apple’s app has seemed like a solid choice in recent years, especially in terms of privacy. Adding ads to the mix changes that, and not only cheapens the experience, but makes me question what Apple plans on doing with my navigation and location data here. I would hope the company that makes one of the only somewhat private streaming boxes on the market would find a way to keep Maps private while serving ads, but only time will tell.
