{"id":44181,"date":"2024-07-22T14:16:10","date_gmt":"2024-07-22T18:16:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=44181"},"modified":"2024-09-10T10:08:51","modified_gmt":"2024-09-10T14:08:51","slug":"taboola-apple-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2024\/07\/22\/taboola-apple-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Taboola + Apple News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sara Fischer<\/a> (Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n

Ad tech giant Taboola has struck a deal with Apple to power native advertising within the Apple News and Apple Stocks apps, Taboola founder and CEO Adam Singolda told Axios.<\/p>

[…]<\/p>

The deal is also a recognition from Apple that growing its ad business will require a serious sales operation — one that, if Apple doesn’t build internally, will need to be outsourced.<\/p>

[…]<\/p>

This isn’t the first time Apple has worked with a third party on ad sales. Before working with Taboola, Apple had an exclusive deal<\/a> with NBCUniversal to sell ads for Apple Stocks and Apple News.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Om Malik<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I’ve been a happy Apple One customer. It made perfect sense to sign up for the package considering I was paying for Apple TV+, Apple Music, and iCloud storage. For an extra couple of dollars, I could get Apple News+, so I thought why not. That ended today when I learned that Apple had struck a deal with Taboola<\/a>, a company known for serving low-quality ads next to web content. I decided to cut bait.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

If you look at Facebook’s ARPU in the U.S. and Canada, it is hovering around $54 or about $4.50 a month. There’s no way Apple News and Stocks are as good at monetizing from advertising or have the market power to extract better advertising pricing. If they did, then they wouldn’t be partnering with Taboola. It makes more sense for Apple to charge a few dollars more from its Apple News customers and eschew all advertising. That’s almost a better business decision and actually maintains brand integrity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Nick Heer<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Then again, services revenue seems to have compelled Apple to do lots of things which previously felt wrong. It has a credit card with interest rates currently between 19.24% and 29.49%. It aggressively advertises<\/a> its services in its operating systems to the detriment<\/a> of users’ experiences.<\/p>\n\n

These moves may not feel like they fit Apple’s brand if your impression of it was formed more than ten years ago. There is no use protesting that they are out of character, however, when priorities like these feel like they represent today’s Apple.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

M.G. Siegler<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The typical Taboola ads you see around the web – “chumbox” as they’re called, which is just a great way to frame them – are terrible. They’re visual reminders of the worst tendencies of humanity. They’re clickbait, productized to the max. So yes, it is shocking that Apple would partner with the company responsible for spreading these around the web.<\/p>

But it’s also quite possible that Apple is going to heavily restrict the kind of ads Taboola can serve up.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Eric Schwarz<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Apple News as a whole (both the free version and the “plus” version) just isn’t very good<\/a> and hasn’t been for awhile<\/a>. Between repeatedly surfacing content from topics and news organizations I’ve blocked and already tacky ads, it’s not a place I really want to spend time or spend money on.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

John Gruber<\/a>:<\/p>\n

If you told me that the ads in Apple News have been sold by Taboola for the last few years, I’d have said, “Oh, that makes sense.” Because the ads in Apple News — at least the ones I see — already look like chumbox Taboola ads. Even worse, they’re incredibly repetitious.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

senturion<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

A service you pay for should have no ads let alone the shitty ads Apple adds to the News app.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n