Dive Brief:
- Apple has given publishers and digital advertisers headaches from its adding of ad blocking capabilities to iOS 9, and now including a prompt to some ads on its mobile News app before users actually see ads.
- For some ads, users are presented with an additional step that asks them if they want to view the ad and also informs them by doing so they will leave the Apple News app.
- Publishers get 100% of ad revenue on the app that they sell themselves, and 70% if Apple sells the ads, but Apple’s new policy might have some media groups rethinking taking part in News.
Dive Insight:
Apple has added a new layer of difficulty for publishers and marketers trying to serve ads on its mobile News app. Currently, some ads that are clicked on serve users a prompt as a call-to-action box. The note lets the user know that following through with viewing the ad takes them away from the app and forces them to choose to view the ad or not.
This adds a fairly substantial level of difficulty for marketers hoping to reach that audience. And, this appears as yet another move from Apple to block ads on its mobile devices coming on the heels of the iOS 9 release with its built in ad blocking capability on the mobile Safari browser.
The tech firm has been actively adding publishers to the News roster and publishers from The Washington Post, New York magazine's The Cut fashion blog, Vox and CNN are reportedly on board.
Apple is possibly seeking to streamline the user experience on the news app, and potentially reacting to research from GoldSpot Media that found 38% of static mobile banner ad clicks, and 13% of rich media mobile ad clicks were accidental. These results seem to confirm theories that mobile ad clickthrough rates are inflated due to hard to avoid ads on small mobile screens.
