Advertisements reportedly coming to Apple Maps

The rich get richer.

Apple is reportedly moving toward integrating an advertisement "feature" in Apple Maps. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, the Cupertino Colossus may soon allow businesses to pay for a featured slot at the top of search queries in its default navigation application.

Per Gurman, this idea has been in the works for a few years at this point. Gurman claims that Apple could be implanting ads in the Maps app "as early as next year." The ads would work in a similar fashion to the featured slot in App Store searches, which lets companies pay to push their app to the top of the search results (though these are clearly marked as ads). As such, companies would be able to pay Apple to push a location of their storefront, restaurant, etc. to the top of results when users use keywords in their search.

Gurman was told that Apple's interface will be better than "what Google and other companies offer inside of mapping services," though he offered no details. As such, the interface will likely be subjective, as all designs are. Also, Gurman states that Apple will "leverage AI" to keep search results "relevant and useful." Apple's flavor of AI, Apple Intelligence, has been rather hit or miss with consumers, so it will be interesting to see how it functions with integrated ads. 

Of course, the primary criticism here is the appearance of greed. As Gurman points out, Apple's integration of ads for its own services (e.g. Apple TV, iCloud) has largely been met with negative responses from iPhone users. Considering the price premium Apple's devices carry, this criticism is quite warranted. 

Apple Maps ads are still not official as of press time, but if Apple does move forward with this additional revenue stream, users can expect to see promoted search results in a 2026 update for Apple Maps.