Get ready to be annoyed: Apple wants to put ads in Maps

Macworld

Open the App Store app on your iPhone and pretty soon you’ll spot an ad: I’m seeing one for Temu on the front page, and a search for “monster hunter” surfaces another for Honkai: Star Rail before we get to any games of that name. This is mildly annoying and makes it slightly harder to find the apps you want, but including ads makes Apple money.

Like it or loathe it, this strategy appears to be part of Apple’s future. It’s already expanded to include ad placements in Apple News and the Stocks app. And according to the latest instalment of Mark Gurman’s Power On newsletter, the company is “exploring” a plan to monetize its Maps app by accepting advertisements there too.

This could take the format, as is most prominent in the App Store, of paid-for entries at the top of search listings, presumably distinguished from organic results by a colored background and a small label saying “Ad.” Or it could, as Gurman explains, “make certain locations appear more prominently on the map.” Swipe across your local area and you might find that branches of Starbucks catch the eye more than you’d otherwise expect.




This is how search ads work in the App Store. The ad is clearly labelled, but it takes up space.David Price / Foundry

While this isn’t unprecedented–Google Maps already does something similar–Apple fans are unlikely to be pleased to hear about this plan, which prioritizes advertisers’ interests over those of the user. But it fits with the company’s larger strategic direction at the moment, which is to look for ways to diversify its revenue streams beyond a small number of hardware lines and particularly to build its services income. Apple needs the services division to be ready to fill the shortfall when the iPhone stops being such a lucrative cash cow.

In any case, we don’t need to worry about the plan just yet. Gurman reports that “there is no timeline or active engineering work being done.” So far the project has taken the form of speculative planning and an all-hands meeting for the Maps team.