When we ran a poll last month, the overwhelming majority of 9to5Mac readers agreed that Apple should exit the ad business.
Ads have now landed in Apple Maps in the US and Canada, and my view is that they are every bit as bad as expected …
Apple warned us back in March that we would begin seeing ads in the company’s Maps app at some point in the summer. We first spotted them ourselves yesterday, and the company confirmed that the rollout began in the last few days. Within a few weeks, everyone in the US and Canada will be seeing them.
The company says that privacy is a major focus.
The new Maps ads build on Apple’s existing privacy-first approach to advertising. A user’s location and the ads they see and interact with in Maps are not associated with their Apple Account. Personal data stays on the user’s device, is not collected or stored by Apple, and is not shared with advertisers or other third parties.
I’m sure all of that is true, but I still think it’s a terrible look for two reasons.
The only non ad revenue reason I can think for having ad's in Apple Maps is to get more businesses to register their locations in maps. One of the problems that Apple Maps has had over Google for years is plenty of businesses don't upload their details to maps or let said details become out of date by never updating the information, this is less of an issue in North America due to the prevalence of iPhone's but its significantly worse abroad.
Ads could technically be used as a way to entice businesses to upload details about themselves as they can then run ad campaigns in the same program(or this gets their marketing team to fill in all the information to run an ad campaign). Do I think that's actually why Apple is doing this? Absolutely not, this is definitely a play for more money but it could see some improvements to the map data as a consequence at least.
First, while Apple isn’t doing any kind of tracking in order to deliver personalized ads, almost every other app and website is. Most people are going to assume the iPhone maker is doing the same, and – however unfair the perception might be – that damages the company’s reputation for protecting our privacy.
Second, it simply looks cheap. Ads are a necessary evil in both the app and web publishing ecosystems: they are what keep the lights on when an app or website is free to use. But Apple doesn’t need ad revenue to pay its bills: it already charges a premium price for premium hardware. Ads simply don’t fit with the company’s image.
I think it was John Gruber who likened ads in Apple apps to those awful Intel Inside stickers you got on cheap Windows laptops. Sure, we understand that companies aiming to provide budget laptops need every revenue stream they can find, but we would never have expected Apple to cheapen the look of a MacBook by adding them. Why, then, should we see ads in the stock apps on our Apple devices?
My view very much remains that Apple has no business being in the ad business.
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Ben Lovejoy is a British technology writer and EU Editor for 9to5Mac. He’s known for his op-eds and diary pieces, exploring his experience of Apple products over time, for a more rounded review. He also writes fiction, with two technothriller novels, a couple of SF shorts and a rom-com!
