Apple Maps might get a fairly big change soon, and it’s one that few people will be excited about.
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported this week that Apple will put advertisements in the Maps app on iPhone this summer, with an initial announcement as early as this month. Rather than bombarding users with annoying pop-up ads, it sounds like it’ll be more of a “sponsored search results” sort of thing, so you might see an ad for a specific restaurant or Uber Eats as part of a search query, even when that’s not exactly what you were looking for.
This idea also came up in a report last year, but it sounds like it’s actually happening soon. According to Gurman, the Apple Maps ads would operate similar to ads on Google Maps, with advertisers bidding on search terms like “coffee” or “thai food.”
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Nobody likes it when a previously ad-free app gets ads, but in complete fairness to all involved, Google Maps has had sponsored search results for years, and that hasn’t stopped it from becoming the go-to navigation app. Users will put up with fairly non-intrusive ads as long as the app does its job, which has sometimes been a problem for Apple Maps over the years.
Despite all of that, though, the reception to the idea on social media has been pretty cold. Frosty, in fact.
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Perhaps people are just tired of constantly being advertised to in every part of their lives.
One reason iOS users might be angry? Apple is already reporting record sales in 2026, with Tim Cook calling the demand for iPhones “simply staggering.”
Topics
Apple
Apps & Software
