Apple Showing Gambling App Ads beneath Problem Gambling Apps

Developers for Apple’s App Store are fuming at a change in the advertising policy that is allowing gambling app advertising to be associated with their apps and product pages.

Gambling App Ads Shown on Multiple Places

The changes implemented on Tuesday brought ads to the “You Might Also Like” sections of the App Store and the Today tab, allowing developers to advertise their products in more places, but just hours later, some of the developers expressed their frustration that gambling ads appear in their own App Store listings outside of their control.

According to Apple, the new placements will increase discovery for apps across the App Store, including “when customers first arrive, search for something specific, and browse apps to download.”

Some of the most prominent developers such as the developer of the podcast app Overcast, Marco Arment, and the developer of the text editor app Runestone, Simon Støvring, vented their frustration on Twitter at the decision of Apple to give advertisers a choice to have their ad shown in app categories different than their own app’s category and thus allow ads for gambling apps to appear in listings for unrelated apps, including their own.

Twitter users responding to the tweets said that gambling app ads are now being displayed beneath apps designed to help people recover from a gambling addiction and even beneath a children’s education app.

While developers complained about the unwanted association with gambling apps, it turns out gambling app ads are not the only types of questionable ads that are now appearing where they were not appearing before the update as another Twitter account reported that an “adult video chat” ad appeared beneath Apple’s own Books app.

Apple’s Advertising Revenue Strategy

A report from the Insider earlier this year hinted that Apple plans to focus on its streaming and advertising business following the initial success of its App Tracking Transparency policy launched last year under which developers should let app users choose between in-app tracking or not, depriving them of advertising revenue in case users opt-out and forcing them to spend more on the App Store instead.

Apple also is planning to expand the ads to its Podcasts, Maps and Books apps according to a Mark Gurman’s Bloomberg report. In August, Gurman stated that Apple would launch keyword-based search result ads on Apple Maps this year as the company is seeking to almost triple advertising revenue to at least $10 billion per year.

According to projections of research firm Omdia, Apple’s advertising business could well hit $5.5 billion in 2022.