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Apple introduces automated buying and improved customer targeting for iTunes Radio ads

Advertisers looking to make automated ad purchases on Apple’s iTunes Radio platform will finally be able to do so thanks to changes the company is rolling out now. While in-app iAds have been available for automated targeting for some time now, audio ads that run on free iTunes Radio accounts have always only been available through Apple’s sales representatives.

Enhanced customer targeting is also being added to the iAd offering. User phone numbers and email addresses can be anonymously compared against advertisers’ in-house data. iAd Workbench will also allow advertisers to target specific segments of the iTunes Radio userbase, utilizing the Customer Match feature that has been available to in-app ads since it was released last year.

As with banners and other iAds, users who opt-out of targeted advertisments will be exempted from the service. While Apple is planning to revamp its Beats Music service later this year, iTunes Radio is expected to remain its own separate product

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Comments

  1. philboogie - 9 years ago

    “User phone numbers and email addresses can be anonymously compared against advertisers’ in-house data.”

    How does that work? Never mind; won’t be using it. Sound spooky, sounds Googely.

  2. Gazoo Bee - 9 years ago

    Can someone explain to me why the hell Apple even got into advertising in the first place? It not only seems like a colossal fail years later, it puts them in compromising situations as is proven here.

    It makes them no money, and it neither adds to nor subtracts from the “quality” of the adverts. that is to the degree that something as insidious and moral as advertising could be said to have “quality”.

  3. PERHAPS – and i say perhaps – this signals that iRadio will *finally* be rolled out international. Seems odd they’d invest in making changes to a service that’s either on the verge of being replaced or purely US.

  4. Morac - 9 years ago

    I subscribe to iTunes Match and started getting ads today in iTunes Radio. That goes directly against what Apple said that iTunes Match subscribers wouldn’t get ads in iTunes Radio.

  5. OK Apple users, we are now the product.