Apple’s interest in advertising isn’t new. From the ill-fated launch of iAd in 2010 to the steady growth of its search business, to its increasingly aggressively dismantling of third-party tracking, Apple has never been indifferent to the ad economy. If anything, it’s history shows a company intrigued by it but cautious about embracing it too directly.
Through it all, Apple positioned itself as a privacy champion. That stance gave it both moral authority and regulator insulation even as it laid the groundwork to shape, and now profit from, the advertising industry on its own terms. To some, the new Apple Ads branding might look like a shift away from that ethos. But it’s more likely a continuation of the strategy that’s always defined the company: monetizing its principles on its own terms.
Apple's Beats brand today shared a new ad in its ongoing Pill People series, this time highlighting the various USB-C cables that Beats debuted earlier this week.
As Strava CEO Mike Martin put it in an interview with TechRadar, alongside Runna CEO Dom Maskell, "The way that I think about it, it's like the world's largest team just got a new coach. I think that's a really exciting way to position it."
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Martin said: "I want to be really clear to both communities and user bases... A key component of Strava is that we are and remain an open platform for the entire connected fitness industry. So we expect to continue to do that, and that is the way that Runna is is integrated in with Strava as well.
I wonder if there is an ad-tech business out there that Apple can just buy to jump-start its new iAds.
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