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Apple plans to double its workforce in less than 18 months at its fastest-growing digital advertising business.
LinkedIn reports that the iPhone maker has about 250 people in its group of ad platforms. On Apple’s careers website, it is looking to fill another 216 roles by the end of 2020, four times the 56 it was hiring for.
The digital advertising industry has loomed large over Apple’s advertising ambitions since last year, when it introduced privacy rules that boosted the $400 billion digital ad market, making it difficult to tailor ads to Apple’s 1 billion iPhone users.
Since the policy was introduced, Facebook’s parents Meta, Snap and Twitter have lost billions of dollars in revenue — and much more by market valuation, though there are additional contributing factors.
“It was really like a global panic,” said Jed Arenstein, head of South Africa-based Incubeta, a global marketing execution company, of the fallout from Apple’s changes.
Meanwhile, what was once Apple’s ad business is now “growing incredibly fast,” according to a job posting. The business has gone from a few hundred million dollars in revenue in the late 2010s to about $5 billion, according to research group Evercore ISI, which says Apple expects to have a $30 billion ad business within four years.
Compared to Google and Facebook, whose 2021 ad revenue is $209 billion and $115 billion, Apple’s advertising business is small. But there are concerns that the digital ad industry could expand too quickly, in part through legislation that critics and rivals say would give it an unfair advantage.
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“Building new ad systems to compete effectively with tens of thousands of employees and 10- to 20-year-old executives is a near-impossible task,” said Alex Austin, CEO of AdTech Group. “Unless, somehow, you manage to hurt those competitors on your platform,” he added.
Apple has been the leading Big Tech vendor to refrain from engaging in “surveillance capitalism” — the practice of offering free services to customers but then profiting from their data with targeted ads.
CEO Tim Cook “If we monetize our customers, we can make a lot of money,” he said in 2018.
But with Apple expanding twice over the past two years where developers can buy ads in the App Store and planning to expand even more, critics see Cook as making a significant U-turn.
David Steinberg, CEO of marketing technology company Zeta Global, said Apple was becoming “Machiavellian” and “brilliant” in accepting privacy rules that would force rivals to rebuild their ad infrastructure, leaving itself open to fill the gap.
“(Their ad work) is incredibly (and) air-covered,” he said, “protecting consumer privacy.”
Apple declined to comment on its long-term ambitions. But job ads’ goals for prospective employees are nothing less than “redefining advertising” in a “privacy-centric” world.
The 216 jobs Apple is looking to fill include product designers and managers, data engineers and sales professionals.
An announcement from an engineering lead posted on Aug. 24 hints at “Apple’s most secretive and strategic plans” and says it wants to build “a super-secret, technologically sophisticated future.” . . Supply (marketplace) platform and demand side platform.
These are core parts of the adtech business, where advertisers buy and sell ads on multiple exchanges, which can place ads on mobile apps downloaded from the App Store. Apple can consider mobile applications “first party” data because all activities are happening on the iPhone, in line with its own privacy rules, which prohibit unauthorized tracking of users in third-party applications.
The roles are mostly in the US but include at least 27 locations in Europe, 12 in China, 12 in India, four in Japan and two in Singapore.
“This is a huge group — bigger than most small companies,” Arenstein said. “Wherever there’s smoke there’s fire, and that’s certainly some smoke.”
Apple is not opposed to ads per se. In 2010, company founder Steve Jobs tried to pioneer in-app advertising so iPhone apps could stay free. Cook objects to how iPhone users’ personal data can be bought and sold by undisclosed third parties without their consent.
Still, Apple setting the rules for how ads should work and expanding into that area strikes many viewers as problematic.
“Right now, in terms of the surveillance economy – it’s safer to use an Apple phone versus a Google phone, because Google has developed its products for surveillance purposes, while Apple is not a major advertising company,” Kler said. Atkin, founder of Czech My Ads, Guardian. But if Apple suddenly enters that territory, they won’t have that competitive advantage.
Apple risks its reputation if consumers and regulators clash over the privacy debate – a central part of recent iPhone campaigns. If the argument wins, Apple will have an open runway.
Margo Canrose, Skai’s chief marketing officer, said the omnichannel ad platform “makes perfect sense” for Apple to follow in the footsteps of Google, Facebook and Amazon and build its own ad network.
For years, power in adtech has been flowing from a decentralized “open web” to an “open web” protected by individual companies that can manage how advertising is bought, served, measured and recorded.
“The world has long been unfazed by Apple’s ambitions,” she added. There are a few players with disproportionate power, and Apple is the sleeping giant.
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