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Tim Cook is taking Apple to the Croisette.
Okay, maybe not Cook himself, but Apple is reportedly preparing to woo advertisers at Cannes Lions, the industry’s annual ballyhoo in the south of France: The notoriously tight-lipped company has rented a space atop the Carlton hotel, where it’ll host meetings and events in addition to a week of programming, Insider reported.
Yacht rock: Tech companies have long jetted to the south Riviera to court advertisers. While many reserve a yacht for Cannes, Amazon took over an entire dang port last year (and will again this year). Apple appears to be taking a page from the same playbook, using the festival as an opportunity to introduce advertisers to its growing ad offerings.
Here’s what we know about Apple’s advertising ambitions:
- Apple already sells ads in its App Store and within apps like Apple News. Ads have also run on some of its streaming content, like Major League Baseball games. The company’s services business, which includes ad revenue, grew nearly 5% year over year in 2022 to $19 billion.
- Last summer, Digiday reported that Apple was building a demand-side, or programmatic advertising, platform. At the time, the company was looking to hire a senior manager to build “the most privacy-forward, sophisticated demand-side platform possible.”
- In February, the company hired ad executive Lauren Fry to “help build a video advertising business” for Apple TV+, The Information reported.
Mixed messaging: Apple makes a lot of money from advertising; according to Bloomberg, about $4 billion per year. However, from a branding perspective, Apple has put user privacy at the core of its messaging and advertising—and its iOS privacy changes have obfuscated large chunks of the mobile advertising ecosystem, hurting platforms like Meta and Snap. Some observers have said its privacy controls ultimately benefit its own ads business. It’s still unclear how Apple reconciles the two, at least publicly.