Apple Maps Might Soon Point You Toward Ads
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Apple is considering adding ads to Apple Maps sometime in 2026 as part of its broader push to expand advertising across iOS, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.
In his recent Power On newsletter, Gurman said Apple’s internal iOS advertising effort is “gaining traction” and could expand to Apple Maps sometime next year, letting businesses pay for more prominent placement in search results.
Gurman said the system will be “quite similar” to how advertising works in search on the App Store, where developers can pay to target keywords in app search results. However, while the App Store displays advertising on its front page, Apple Maps will not — at least not at first.
Apple will reportedly use AI to ensure search results are relevant and useful, with an interface that is said to improve on Google Maps’ ad handling.
Gurman warns that this move could provoke a backlash from customers who already feel Apple’s devices are becoming a “digital billboard” for Apple’s own services:
The big risk Apple faces here is a potential consumer backlash. Some customers are already unhappy that the iPhone has been turned into a digital billboard for services like AppleCare+, Apple Music, Apple TV and Fitness+. The company also pushes web-like ad slots within Apple News. When you consider that an iPhone can cost up to $2,000, some see this as an unseemly money grab.
Mark Gurman
Apple has also put advertising in its TV app for its Friday Night Baseball deal with Major League Baseball and sparked outrage when it used an Apple Wallet push notification to promote F1: The Movie.
As customers become increasingly tired of being nickel-and-dimed to death with subscriptions, in-app purchases, and advertising, it’s easy to imagine how this could add to the fatigue — especially from Apple, which has traditionally been seen as a safe haven from ads.
Gurman did not specify when we could expect to see Apple Maps search ads, other than sometime next year. They could debut sometime next spring, perhaps in iOS 26.4 or a bit later.
Ironically, Apple’s well-known privacy efforts on its computing platforms have interfered with third-party advertising. In 2021, Apple launched a new feature called App Tracking Transparency (ATT), which allows users to decide whether they want to allow apps to track their activity across other apps and websites. This is a key method for marketers to gather user data and serve up more personalized ads, rather than simply showing more random ones.
While Apple should rightly be applauded for any program that protects a user’s privacy, it should perhaps offer an opt-in mechanism to decide whether to be tracked and how much information the tracking should be allowed to gather. ATT has caused collateral damage: while large social networks like Meta have complained that it has led to the loss of billions of dollars in ad revenue, smaller developers have also been hit hard by the feature.
All of that makes it especially ironic that Apple is looking to expand its own advertising business, even as it keeps making it harder for third-party developers to earn ad revenue.
