Apple’s in-house advertising efforts are growing. According to a new report, the company recently started selling its own ads for Apple News—a big shift in its News ad strategy.
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The Wall Street Journal has published a new report detailing one thing we might expect to see on stage at WWDC next week: a digital ad platform expansion. According to the Journal, Apple has been in talks with major apps including Snapchat and Pinterest about the project:
Over the past year, Apple has met with Snap Inc., Pinterest Inc. and other companies about participating in an Apple network that would distribute ads across their collective apps, the people said. Apple would share revenue with the apps displaying the ads, with the split varying from app to app, they said.
Apple has today shared a handful of new ads, focusing on security, ease of use, and environment. The series of ads have a tagline that read switch to iPhone, showcasing features that are better on the iPhone compared to its competitors.
Apple has launched yet another iPhone 6s advert, this time featuring a special celebrity guest: the Cookie Monster. In the ad, named Timer, the blue monster uses hands-free Siri on his iPhone 6s to time (you guessed it) the baking of his cookies.
Although hands-free Siri exists on all iPhones, the ability to say ‘Hey Siri’ out loud without having the phone being plugged in to power is exclusive to Apple’s latest handsets: the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus. Watch the minute-long commercial after the break …
Alongside the release of iOS 9.2 today, Apple is making some improvements to its recently launched News app that it hopes will improve the service for both readers and publishers.
Update: An Instagram spokesperson has reached out with following statement:
“Mobile commerce is definitely a space we are looking at closely. However, this isn’t something we are testing at this time”
Instagram is reportedly testing new ads that will take full advantage of being integrated with Apple’s platforms including the new 3D touch pressure sensitive touchscreen feature and its payments service Apple Pay, Digiday reports.
The integration of Apple Pay and 3D Touch, a new feature introduced with the iPhone 6s that allows pressure sensitive touchscreen interactions, is reportedly being tested as an expansion of Instagram’s recently launched “Shop Now” feature:
It has even run tests with restaurants to sell menu items right from the Instagram feed, without the need to click off the app’s main feed, said an ad agency source familiar with the test.
Some of the shopping tests incorporate features like Apple’s force touch screen feature, which lets consumers apply pressures in their clicks to switch among multiple product options in the images, the source said.
In other Apple Pay news, MacRumors notes that Wegmans will be one of the next major retailers to roll out its rewards card program but that it’s only in a piloting phase ahead of a full roll out next year. Yesteday, Walgreens became the first retailer to offer its rewards cards through Apple Pay.
And possibly related to Apple’s overall rollout of its own payments service, the site noticed Apple appears to have quietly dropped support for PayPal credit payment plans in its US online store. It is, however, continuing to offer Paypal as a financing option in the UK and as a payment option in its online stores there.
HTC’s launch of the One A9 has caught the attention of many. The company insists that the latest mid-tier device isn’t an iPhone copy, despite the fact that — from almost every angle — it looks like one. Having spent time with it, we agree in many ways. Even if it is, the very fact it runs Android 6.0 is a big enough differentiating factor for many consumers. Still, the Taiwanese manufacturer isn’t helping itself by releasing its latest advertising campaign.
The latest full length ad, named ‘Be Brilliant’ has a clear message: Be Different. Sound familiar?
Apple today has shared three new advertisements for iPhone 6s to its YouTube channel. These new ads come just days after the company debuted seven new ads for Apple Watch. Today’s new iPhone 6s ads are called “The Camera,” “Crush,” and “Flip a Coin,” each highlighting a specific feature of the device.
Just two weeks after unveiling an initial six new Apple Watch advertisements, Apple this evening has shared seven more, all being part of the same campaign. The ads all highlight certain capabilities of Apple Watch and are short, 15 second TV spots.
Apple this evening has shared six new video advertisements for Apple Watch. All six of the ads have different focuses, but all of them center around what Apple Watch is useful for and in what instances it can be used effectively.
Apple’s support for building Safari ad blockers in iOS 9 was sure to be controversial as they negatively and directly impact writers/publications like us here at 9to5Mac and others that rely on advertising for revenue. And while a few ad blockers climbed the App Store’s top paid chart this week, the highest ranked Safari content blocker has been pulled after being sold for just 48 hours. Developer Marco Arment announced today that he decided to pull his ad blocker app Peace from sale, citing that it “just doesn’t feel good” to [profit from] the negative impact to “many who don’t deserve the hit.”
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Apple today debuted four new ads for Apple Music via its YouTube channel. The ads, like the three debuted last month, focus on the service’s capability to help listeners to discover new music. The new ads feature musician Leon Bridges, singer songwriter Shamir, and rapper Flying Lotus. Apple also today announced a new partnership with Burberry that will see the company developing an Apple Music channel exclusively featuring British artists.
Amazon may have been Apple’s target when it unveiled its iBooks Store alongside the iPad in 2010, but the digital retail giant’s latest move is helping fulfill Steve Jobs’ vision of a web without Flash. Amazon Advertising issued an update to its technical guidelines today declaring that it will stop accepting Flash-based ads starting next month. Adobe cited “recent browser setting updates from Google Chrome, and existing browser settings from Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari” that interfere with displaying Flash ads.
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Apple today has debuted three new video ads for Apple Music on its YouTube channel. The ads focus on the music available via the streaming service, the service’s Connect social network, and the effect music can have on those who “live and breathe” it. The ads all tout that Apple Music has “All the artists you love and are about to love, all in one place.”
Following the initial launch campaign, Apple is debuting four new Apple Watch ads showing the device in action in several different real-world scenarios. The first video called Goals demonstrates a range of features including the Apple Watch’s fitness and workout tracking apps as well as third-party apps available for the device. Another video called Closer echoes a similar theme of recent Apple ads that show people using Apple’s products to stay in communication and share experiences.
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Ads are things we all love to hate. While some can be amusing, and others can be useful, drawing our attention to products or services we weren’t aware of, mostly we view them as things to tolerate at best – and to be profoundly irritated by at worst.
Some think they have a simple solution to this: using an adblocker. Adblocking software has existed for desktop browsers for many years, but to date there haven’t been any effective blockers for iOS.
All that could change with iOS 9, however, with content-blocking capabilities built right into the platform. If Apple chooses to allow adblockers into the App Store (and we don’t yet know yet for sure that it will), that could require advertisers, ad networks, publishers and readers alike to up their games …
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Ad blocking extensions have been possible on Safari for Mac for a long time, but plugin architecture for Safari on iOS is much more limited. With iOS 9, Apple has added a special case of extension for ad blockers. Apps can now include ‘content blocker’ extensions that define resources (like images and scripts) for Safari to not load. For the first time, this architecture makes ad blockers a real possibility for iOS developers to make and iOS customers to install and use.
The inclusion of such a feature at this time is interesting. Apple is also pushing its own news solution in iOS 9 with the News app, which will include ads but not be affected by the content blocking extensions as they only apply to Safari. There is also clearly the potential for Safari ad blockers to hurt Google, which seems to be a common trend with Apple’s announcements recently…
Apple has expanded its advertising campaign for the Apple Watch to the web. Apple has begun running a series of advertisements at the top of the YouTube homepage that are based on Apple’s trio of new Apple Watch TV ads. The advertisements are short video clips from the longer TV-oriented ads, and they link to Apple’s website to provide more information about the Watch, rather than the ads hosted on YouTube.
In coordination with the Watch’s worldwide release, Apple has ramped its marketing campaign further with three new ads that are airing starting today. The ads titled ‘Rise’, ‘Up’ and ‘Us’ focus on everyday activities being enhanced by the Watch. Unlike some of Apple’s product-focused marketing, this is more in the style of iPad commercials.
The ‘Rise’ ad focuses on morning activities, such as using the Watch to wake you up or answer text messages in the breakfast queue. ‘Up’ is focused on the Workout and Activity apps, highlighting the ‘Stand’ notifications and related fitness features. ‘Us’ focuses on communication highlighting Digital Touch sketch, tap and heartbeat sharing features as well as the controversial animated emoji.
All three videos are embedded after the break …
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MucM1Cwe3t8]
Update: Some of the websites shown in the video cannot be explained by the hypothesis posted below about adverts redirecting to the App Store. The large amount of corroboration by readers about this happening to them suggests there is a mechanism, somewhere along the line, causing a real problem.
Website advertisement companies have found a way to circumvent the protections introduced in iOS 8 to stop users from being kicked to the App Store because of certain cleverly-coded JavaScript advertisements.
I am now experiencing this myself, and it makes browsing on the iPhone unusable. Browsing to websites such as Reddit and Reuters and others now automatically open the App Store. In many cases, there is no way for me to read the actual content on the pages. You can see this happen in the video above.
This flared up as a serious issue last year, when users found they were being taken to random App Store pages without granting any kind of permission…
In iOS 8 beta 2, Apple supposedly had remedied the issue: “Safari now blocks ads from automatically redirecting to the App Store without user interaction.”. However, it seems that ad companies have now managed to work around these safeguards.
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As Apple prepares to bring the Apple Watch to market in just a few short weeks, the company is once again turning to Vogue magazine to showcase its new product category or wearable devices. We first saw the Apple Watch make its magazine debut on the cover of Vogue China late last year, and now the popular fashion-focused publication is featuring a multi-page spread displaying various Apple Watch collections. What’s more impressive, though, is the first video ad campaign for the Apple Watch found in the digital version of Vogue seen below…
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[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMw_rr3OYYw]
It’s no surprise that the three major card companies in the US have been taking advantage of being the first with Apple Pay out the door and that the majority of their latest ads and promotions have centered around the new payment service. The latest comes from American Express with a just released ad focusing on highlighting Apple Pay as “The Next Evolution of Membership.”
[hulu id=lqyna__lnmz36pprgionzw width=704 thumbnail_frame=73]
Alongside Justin Timberlake, Jimmy Fallon has become the voice of the iPhone 6 with Apple releasing a continuous series of ads featuring both entertainers. Fallon also sits behind a MacBook on the set of The Tonight Show on NBC, something that he brought over from his time hosting Late Night on NBC.
Now Fallon’s Tonight Show is giving the gift of Apple, specifically to the studio audience from last night’s taping as each attendee was gifted with a brand new iPad Air 2 as part of this week’s holiday gift giveaway segment. See the clip above (and wish you were there!) …
(We know Hulu works in a very limited number of countries and will post the YouTube clip when available.)
Apple TV is receiving a flurry of new channels today. Most prominently is a brand new YouTube app, to bring the client up-to-date with some of the other platforms. The new app reflects the design of other set-top box clients, with easier access to subscriptions and search functions. For the security conscious, the YouTube app now uses OAuth to login rather than naive password entry (by visiting youtube.com/activate)
Unfortunately, this YouTube update also means that Apple TV users will start seeing ads for the first time on the platform. Naturally, some users will be disappointed by this addition — it is not possible to opt out of the update.
Aside from YouTube, Apple TV is also getting four entirely new channels from various providers. Rolling out today are channels for Conde Nast’s ‘The Scene’, ‘Fusion’, Dailymotion (a video upload site from France) and UFC for premium subscription fighting and martial arts content.
