Looks like Apple has brought in a new ad format for sponsored posts, and they will start to appear in users’ news feeds alongside articles.
Apple News App Will Be Displaying These Ads, And Will Be Available For The Mobile Versions Of The Company’s OS
Apple’s in-house mobile-advertising platform that is updated this month will feature sponsored content and will display directly in the content feeds. This particular format is available for iOS, translating into the latest addition being available for iPhones and iPads. The tech giant is yet to confirm if the same format is going to be branched out to its OS X platform.
The ads will be set in the same font as other articles in the News app, with the exception that there is going to be a tiny ‘sponsored’ tag to notify you on whether the content has been sponsored or not. These ads have been intended to merge with the surroundings, suggesting that they should not interfere with the reading experience of the smartphone or tablet user, but that remains to be seen.
Currently, publishers can upload sponsored content to Apple News, but they must flag those stories as native content in metadata, or publishers could find their Apple News access suspended.
According to Kunal Gupta, CEO of advertising-tech firm Polar told a source the following:
“Publishers that participate in Apple News put an RSS feed into Apple News. That feed is essentially a feed of content and some of those pieces of content might be branded content. The onus is on the publisher in that case to very clearly label and title that content.”
While this new way will definitely provide a gateway for publishers to sell and promote sponsored posts, it will definitely come at a cost, because Apple will be keeping 30 percent of these revenues. These updates are another sign that Apple is working on providing ways for publishers and advertisers to monetize the new content platform.
Apple News will be updated as part of the latest version of iOS, and you can bet that it is going to be rolled out next week. For those thinking that Apple News is fairly unpopular should take a look at the latest metric from The Wall Street Journal, because it stated that 40 million people had used the Apple News app during the month of January, 2016.
Do you guys think that this will provide a new way for publishers to steamroll sponsored content? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
