Bad news if you are a user of Apple Maps. As reported by Mark Gurman in Bloomberg, Apple plans to bring advertising to its navigation application and will do so very soon, this summer. But we are not talking about traditional advertisements, but rather that companies will be able pay to rank highest in Apple Maps search results.
This means that if a restaurant wins the winning bid for, for example, the term ‘pizza’, will receive priority over other relevant pizzeriasexplains Gurman. The system is similar to how advertising works in Google Mapswhich also allows businesses to pay to rank higher in search results.
Google introduced its specific advertising formats for Maps in May 2016, with products such as promoted pins (sponsored pins that highlight businesses directly on the map) and sponsored business pages. He then expanded that approach with local campaigns and, today, Google Ads Maps includes several advertising formats. Hopefully Apple will follow the same path.
The move will bring even more revenue to Apple’s services division. This is the unit responsible for the App Store, Apple Music, AppleTV, iCloud and advertising, which exceeded 109 billion dollars in 2025. Apple already offers advertising within its App Store, in addition to its applications News and Stocks.
The company also told developers that it planned add more ad space to App Store search results in Runited kingdom and Japan on March 3, with a release in USA and other countries expected before the end of this month, according to MacRumors.
Apple Maps debuted in September 2012 with iOS 6but his debut was marked by errors and inaccuracies so notable that Tim Cook He ended up publicly apologizing weeks later. Since then, Apple has gone remaking the service with own data and cartographya redesign that the company presented as a reconstruction from scratch, and in 2024 it took it to the web.