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You’re really stretching here. Ad companies make their money by selling ads; compare how much of Apple’s revenue comes from selling ads (very small %) vs how much of Google’s revenue comes from selling ads (almost all of it).

Prompts to buy additional products do not make a company an advertising company. If it did, every restaurant in the world would be an “advertising company” because wait staff, cashiers, and menus encourage customers to order additional food.

While Apple is not considered an advertising company today, they have been growing services revenue for the past several years. Part of that is growth in ads (3rd party ads in app store, 1st party ads in the OS, iAd [discontinued], etc).

Even if rank and file Apple employees do not want to grow ads in iOS/App Store, clearly Apple leadership wants to sell more ads (and increase their services revenue). At App Store scale, their volume of ads is not trivial.

The App Store is a list of ads, on which Apple earns a commission. I don't think it's a stretch to see it as an advertising platform.

1. Apple Displays ads (Sales content for products.)

2. Apple gets paid when those ads convert into sales.

If Apple didn't get paid when Apps were sold through the app store, then I could see how it isn't an ad platform for them. Yet, the only option, if you want to sell a product listed on the app store is to pay Apple their cut, which fundamentally turns it into a paid advertising platform controlled by Apple.

You can distort the meaning of words and call it whatever you like.

But it's a channel cost not an advertising one.

Apple still gets their cut when an in-app purchase is made hence it's not tied to the App Store list.

Curious if you'd say the same about Microsoft Windows. They never show banner ads anywhere in the product but they do advertise their own apps and services (and like the App Store on iPhone, they advertise apps you can install from their Microsoft Store).

IMO, both Microsoft and Apple are showing me ads I don't want to be shown.

Microsoft Windows goes one step further and just installs their other products like Teams without asking.

> Every time you open the App store, you're opening a giant garden of advertisements.

Curation and Ads are very different. When you walk into a Target and see a curated set of products like bath towels, they're not Ads. In fact, customers pay more to shop at Target because of Target's ability to curate quality products consistently.

Now the App Store does have Ads (mainly in search - one slot at the top). But it's far from a "giant garden every time you open it".

Does Apple charge for the curation?

No

They charge you $99/year to qualify, so yes.

Arguably yes, since that curation is paid for with the cut Apple takes on sales in the Apple store.

Idk about your region, but the App Store in my region features actual advertisements on the front page.

The first showcase is an actual showcase, but the second item is very much ads. And the way it's set up is to have something like 1/2 the image visible without the user scrolling, but the part that says is that it's an ad is not visible without scrolling. So the idea I guess is to have the user click on it to find out more based on 1/2 the image without them knowing that it was an ad.

Did you follow the latest changes where they slapped casino and gambling ads everywhere? https://www.macrumors.com/2022/10/26/app-store-gambling-ads-...

> Apple is fundamentally transforming into an advertising company. The difference between them and ad companies such as Google is that, with Apple, advertising is baked into almost every single product.

It's nice to think this is part of a transformation taking place at Apple. In truth, what is transforming is our perception of Apple. It's not like Analytics has recently changed how it operates.

So you think they need user data to display the ad for Apple Care+ and Apple TV? which they unconditionally display to anyone anyway? Those are the only two ads I have seen.

Calling the app store an ad is really stretching the truth. It‘s a store, of course it displays the products that are for sale.

The App Store itself has ads[0], but some changes might be in preparation for deeper ad integrations[1].

0: https://searchads.apple.com/advanced

1: https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/11/14/apples-4b-ad-busi...

Everyone uses data they collect to “improve” their own offerings.

But the others then make money by sharing/selling the data _to third parties_(incentive).

Does Apple use this data only for internal use, or do they also share (sell) it to third parties? With or without privacy?

Who are the others you are referring to here? Can you be more specific? Because it matters in this case

Google, Facebook, twitter and the rest

Eg, Google has 80-90% (!) income from ads (incentive)

Google doesn't sell personal data to third parties as OP implied

What was it lately about Apple now being valued at more than all the other SV giants combined? Insane.

[edit: not true at all, apologies]

Like countless others I’ve always been very sympathetic to the entire philosophy of the company - like how they’ve mostly kept to the high road in many important ways. It is going to be a huge shame when they go down that AD road.

But on the bright side - it might turn out that Apple will just have to be the first/main for anti-monopoly regulation.

> What was it lately about Apple now being valued at more than all the other SV giants combined?

That it is not true.

https://companiesmarketcap.com/

Maybe it's true if you only consider tech companies in the bay area (silicon valley)? Apple is 2.3T.

GOOG (1.2T) + NVDA (.38T) + META (.29T) + ADBE (.14T) + CRM (.14T) + NFLX (.12T) = 2.27T

Oracle makes or breaks this if you still want to consider them a Silicon Valley company (the headquarters was moved to Austin last year)

I assumed SV giants meant tech giants meant Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta.

Neither MS or Amazon are SV companies...

I assumed the same while writing the comment above.

Perhaps the source I was remembering was also referring to SV companies, and I thought it meant the big ones above.

> It is going to be a huge shame when they go down that AD road.

Bigger or smaller of a shame than the time they went down the surveillance road?