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Apple Prepares To Add Search Ads To Apple Maps 56

Posted by BeauHD from the what-to-expect dept.
Apple is reportedly preparing to add search ads to Apple Maps, "and it could start to roll out to users by the summer," reports AppleInsider, citing sources from Bloomberg (paywalled). From the report: Apple will make an announcement as soon as March. This will bring ads to search queries within the navigation app, which will operate similar to Google's advertising system. Retailers and brands will be able to bid for ad spots located against search queries for specific terms, such as types of food or services. The winning bid will be able to show an ad at the top of the results, pointing to a related location for that business. Apple also announced in January that it would add more ads within the App Store, starting March in the UK and Japan.
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Apple Prepares To Add Search Ads To Apple Maps More

Apple Prepares To Add Search Ads To Apple Maps

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  • Even at [cr]Apple.

  • Are maps really just maps anymore? (Score:3)

    by Fly Swatter ( 30498 ) on Monday March 23, 2026 @04:09PM (#66057074) Homepage
    You use the map, and have to ignore all the little dots that are really just retail store advertisements. On some maps they look like other points of interest and you don't realize you just clicked a retail dot instead of say a traffic camera dot.

    Sure there aren't many of those dots right now, but they will multiply just like ads and bots on the general internet. One day you will see an option to turn off roadways so you can focus on the retail dots that want your money.

    • Depends on the map. If you really want you can use OSM. But it will be missing things you would expect...

      • Missing things like accuracy. It appears someone thought my neighbor's driveway down the road was a through street from the dead end back onto a highway. UPS uses it that way, but it is wrong. That is also what the neighbor gets for connecting the driveway to both sides, they shouldn't be using the dead end as it requires an easement they don't have.

    • You use the map, and have to ignore all the little dots that are really just retail store advertisements. On some maps they look like other points of interest and you don't realize you just clicked a retail dot instead of say a traffic camera dot. Sure there aren't many of those dots right now, but they will multiply just like ads and bots on the general internet. One day you will see an option to turn off roadways so you can focus on the retail dots that want your money.

      The dots, more often than not, are landmarks. If one clicks on them, then one sees which business is at that location, and maybe the page for that business. In Google Maps, I'll grant that they are intrusive. Let's say I sat and ate at a Burger King, I sometimes might get a Maps notification asking me to rate that Burger King, since I obviously spent some time there (which it knows thanks to its spying)

      Generally, if I'm new to a place and looking for something, I do find the dots useful. Of course, if

      • You can turn off tracking, and it will stop that, but then you don't get location history.

        • Only way to do that is denying Maps location permission, but in that case, it's pretty much useless, except for finding out what's where, w/o knowing its location or distance relative to me

          • Only way to do that is denying Maps location permission

            You can just turn location history off, done. Can you be sure google isn't storing it anyway? No. But then, you cannot trust ANY phone because you cannot trust the baseband processor.

  • Gross. Fuck this. (Score:4, Informative)

    by ZackSchil ( 560462 ) on Monday March 23, 2026 @04:34PM (#66057152)

    What more is there to say?

  • because I’d pay for it. Grudgingly.

  • Some ads are useful (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Monday March 23, 2026 @04:48PM (#66057202)

    If a map service wants to take payment to make a business show on their map, that's fine. Good, even.

    It's when that payment makes the business show on the map regardless of whether it's the class of business you're looking for or not that it gets to be a problem.

    I don't need to know where the nearest coffee shop is when I'm searching for a gas station, nor do I need to know where Applebee's is when I ask about McD's. Those additional markers make the map less useful because they make it less clear.

    • Re:Some ads are useful (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MikeDataLink ( 536925 ) on Monday March 23, 2026 @05:21PM (#66057284) Homepage Journal

      If a map service wants to take payment to make a business show on their map, that's fine. Good, even.

      I disagree. Look no further than what Yelp does to see this is a terrible business model for the consumer and the businesses. It's only good for the tech company.

      You have to pay Yelp $250+ a month so that competitors ads don't show on your page and that you are listed #1 for your own brand name. If someone is searching for you and you don't pay, you may be #7 on the list for your own brand name. It's mafia tactics.

      • I use Yelp because it's become the de facto registry of restaurants, open hours, etc., but I feel that at this point it's an objectively bad experience. More and more ads. Inability to exclude certain cuisine types. And did we really need politics and cancel culture coming to restaurants because of something an employee or owner or partner may or may not have said? I'm so sick of social media interactions dehumanizing everything.

        As with Netflix, Facebook, and many other sites, the (stated) goal has gone fro

    • Selling ads against search provides an incentive to degrade search until the ad engine provides the results that the search should have.

      Look at the iOS App Store search, where it can be hard to find an app when searching for its trademarked name. If you're lucky it's just competing products that are buying the app's name as an as keyword, but even then an app maker still has to buy ads against their own name to show up.

  • When Musk, Apple, Google, Meta, etc all have their analogue of NeuraLink (which Apple could conceivably brand an the iThink), remember this day when you ponder whether to get the new whizbang tech implant into your brain, because for the first few years it might seem like the pros outweigh the cons, but then the company updates terms of service to force advertisements injected into your brain against your will, or at least against what you intended when you got the implant a few years earlier and now must v

  • remove Apple Maps (Score:4, Informative)

    by FudRucker ( 866063 ) on Monday March 23, 2026 @05:26PM (#66057296)
    Install Organic Maps, download only what you need for your locale and Organic Maps even works offline so if you lose cellular data it will still work

    • You can use Apple Maps offline. The way you select which part of the map to download is annoying, Apple forces you to update the offline maps regularly is stupid, and that you have to toggle it on/off rather than Apply defaulting to your stored maps when you're in that area is also annoying. But it works. I use it whenever I'm traveling across multiple states as in those cases I need to reserve my phone data for the EV charging apps and locating charging stations.

  • Seriously. Also Drone Nuker would be a very good business model right about now.

  • Funny as hell (Score:4, Funny)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Monday March 23, 2026 @05:40PM (#66057334)

    McDonalds? Try Burger king instead. Are you sure? Y/N. What if we gave you 10% off? Y/N ? Press the invisible [x] to close this window.

  • Inferior Map Product (Score:3)

    by Bahbus ( 1180627 ) on Monday March 23, 2026 @07:24PM (#66057552) Homepage

    I can tell when a driver is using it because they take the most inefficient route available.

  • DO NOT WANT (Score:4, Insightful)

    by GrahamJ ( 241784 ) on Monday March 23, 2026 @07:42PM (#66057588)

    I pay a premium for Apple products because they claim to put the user as a centre of everything they do. This is not doing that.

    Ads suck, no one wants them, and the only reason for them to be there is to make money for the company. Get them out of my UX. If you make it hard to block them that is anti-competitive behavior on top of being user hostile.

    • Re:DO NOT WANT (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Tony Isaac ( 1301187 ) on Monday March 23, 2026 @08:27PM (#66057680) Homepage

      I guess now you've learned how much claims are worth.

      Personally, I pay far less for Android and Windows, because I know that everybody advertises and tracks you, and I might as well at least get a discount for it.

    • I pay a premium for Apple products because they claim to put the user as a centre of everything they do.

      You are now going to carry on paying premium for those products and you are going to be subjected to ads. And you are going to like it, because Apple knows what you need and want.

  • That's the thing about Google Maps right now. At least on the desktop, for me, I barely even notice aside from the "Sponsored" label.

    At this point I'm willing to see what they actually do with it. Apple knows users generally hate ads and want more of an ad-free experience now.

    If anything, they need to fix the dumpster fire of ads in News.

    • If anything, they need to fix the dumpster fire of ads in News.

      Someone who actually uses News?! I think I clicked into it about twice before I uninstalled it and never looked back. Is it of any value??

      • At least where I am (California) Apple News is a solid product. I've been a very happy Apple One subscriber and enjoy it. One reason for me anyway is that I can read our local papers with no paywall, and I use the magazine selection as well. And yes, I've been a huge Apple fan for years. :)

        but I certainly get value out of it.

      • I uninstalled News on every platform I have, be it Apple, Microsoft or Google
  • Since I paid a premium for an OS that didn't pull this crap, can I expect the price to drop sharply? If not, my next phone/tablet won't be Apple. ARE YOU LISTENING APPLE? This is the hill your market share dies on. You have been warned.

  • I have Google Maps and Apple Maps next to each other on my iPhone. I really tried to give Apple a shot but it has always been a sub-par experience for me. And I already highly detest ads (goodbye iTunes). This has to stop. Like forcing an iOS upgrade that throttles my phone to being far less usable than before, while I am simultaneously budgeting to buy the highest end Mac hardware I can, before rampocalypse, is so frustrating. And you know what? I am finding my M2 Max MBP and iPhone 11 Pro Max are.. maybe.

  • I stopped using Apple maps because it kept getting me lost. While I'm sure it has improved since then, I have had to advise someone not to use it after it consistently sent them on the longest route to various destinations.

    • Apple Maps was truly bad for many years. I switched from Google Maps maybe about 5 years ago. I try out Waze and Google Maps again every now and then, but at this point I generally prefer Apple Maps. I rarely find any large routing differences. In my neighborhood, Apple Maps is actually more correct. I've submitted a correction to Google Maps probably a dozen times (over more than a decade) for a road listing that is just totally wrong, and it's never changed. I submitted it to Apple and it was fixed within

      • Well, my experience wasn't good, nor was my coworker's. Whereas the only time Google sent me to the wrong place it was legitimately not it's fault. Identical addresses on the same road in two neighboring municipalities. Dunno how that got past everyone. I was pretty baffled by it, since the location I ended up at didn't exist. Plotted, but no construction at all, so there I was sitting at an intersection looking at trees and wondering where the industrial park was hiding.

  • I use Sygic for my mapping. It's not free, but it's very inexpensive. It can download all maps to your phone and I've found the interface very clean. And they aren't going to start putting ads in their product.

    Remember, nothing is free.

  • I gave up on Apple Maps because the directions are often wrong. It once told me that a local office building was located in the middle of a big green public park that has no parking. And when they're correct the routes often meander through out of the way neighborhoods which adds significant amounts of time over Google Maps directions. Putting ads in an app that is already broken is just stupid.

  • But too late now.

    Should I waste time looking for constructive suggestions about better map apps?

    Naw. This is today's Slashdot.

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