Apple to Launch Paid Map Advertisements This Summer

Apple Inc. announced on Tuesday plans to introduce paid advertisements to its maps service in the United States and Canada this summer. This move marks the company's entry into a business segment long dominated by Alphabet Inc.. Apple Maps, which is bundled on hundreds of millions of iPhones and other devices each year, will display paid advertising on top of existing organic search results. Advertisers will be able to claim their physical location through a set of business tools, which the company also said Tuesday it plans to revamp next month.

While the company did not disclose specific revenue expectations or the number of users among its 2.5 billion active devices who regularly use its maps service, the move launches the firm into more direct competition with both Google and Meta Platforms, Inc. for local advertising dollars. The company has long sought to set itself apart from rivals who generate most of their sales from advertising by highlighting its data privacy controls. It stated that its new map ads will maintain these privacy controls and that a user’s location and the ads they view and interact with will not be associated with their Apple account.

Personal data, according to the company, stays on a user’s device and is not collected, stored, or shared with third parties. This expansion comes at a time when some of the firm's primary revenue sources—including app developer commissions and the billions of dollars received annually from Google for search traffic—are under regulatory pressure in Europe and threatened by new AI technology that is reducing traditional search traffic. The move could also intensify scrutiny of efforts to block rivals such as Meta from gathering data on users, which has been opposed on antitrust grounds as the company ramps up its own advertising business. In addition to map advertising, the company plans to revamp its tools for businesses, including making a previously paid device management tool free of charge.