Apple updated the Management API earlier this month. The API added two fields, "supply sources" and "a channel type". We guess this is the first step for Apple to expand its advertising business.
Apple ’s developer documentation shows that “a channel type” refers to the attributes of the advertising channel to which an ad Campaign belongs, and “supply sources” is used to indicate the location or source of this ad. These two fields will return SEARCH and APPSTORE_SEARCH_RESULTS respectively, indicating that the attribute of this ad is a search ad and the search result of the ad location in the App Store.
Now that there are ads with search attributes and there are also ad channels for App Store search results, there may be more ad formats and channels. According to the Adweek Reported report, Apple may add ad positions in Apple Maps, News and Stocks or Safari.
Within the App Store, the advertising space may not be limited to search results. At present, the App Store ’s advertising position is only the first place in the search results, and the other positions are not set. Google Play, which is also a mainstream application store, has many internal ad slots. The single app or topic recommended on the home page contains ad slots, and the product details page also has ads for apps similar to the product.
Apple ’s attempts at the advertising business have always existed. In 2010, Apple launched the iAd advertising business, allowing advertisers to display their ads in the App Store worldwide. However, due to the unfavorable revenue of iAd, in 2016, Apple announced the discontinuation of iAd advertising services. In the same year, Apple Search Ads (Apple Search Ads) was officially opened.
Apple's repeated shots of the advertising business are due to the fact that as the growth rate of Apple's hardware equipment sales slows down, Apple pays more and more attention to the revenue of the service business. In Apple ’s financial report for the fourth quarter of 2019, Apple ’s service revenue reached $ 12.5 billion, reaching its highest point in history.
At present, Apple's service business is mainly divided into 6 categories, namely App Store service, authorization, iTunes consumption, Apple Care guarantee service, iCloud cloud service, and Apple Pay payment service.
In the App Store service, search advertising is the main part of the advertising business, and the data performance has also been stable. In the comprehensive performance report of the advertising platform published by AppsFlyer in the second half of 2019, Search Ads (Apple Search Advertising) ranked sixth in the game list and third in the application list. The sales on New Year's Day in 2020 reached a record The record of 386 million US dollars, an increase of 20% over last year. The stable income of Search Ads has made Apple more confident and ambitious in the expansion of the advertising business.
The quality of Search Ads ’ads is high, but the magnitude is always low. Developers can find that the magnitude of Search Ads is still far from that of other traditional advertising channels (such as Facebook). For most apps, it is difficult to get a large number of users in Search Ads in a short time, so everyone also hopes that Apple can expand more advertising traffic.