Apple News introduces ad format for sponsored posts that appear in feeds alongside articles, with Apple keeping 30% of revenue
Apple News will soon get ‘native’ ads that look like articles — Apple has introduced a new ad format for sponsored posts that will appear in users' news feeds alongside articles in the Apple News app.
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the opening move in a decade-long tug-of-war over who monetizes Apple News. At launch-adjacent time, Apple is inserting itself into the ad flow: sponsored posts that render like articles in users' feeds, with Apple skimming 30% — the same split it applies elsewhere on its platforms.
Publishers immediately pushed back on the stack: within about a year Apple relented enough to let top publishers deliver ads through their own ad tech such as Google's DoubleClick, and later softened economics further via the News Partner Program's reduced commission. By late 2024 the relationship had inverted again, with reports that Apple began selling its own ad inventory in Apple News while returning 70% to publishers.
First-order effects
- Publishers gain a new native-ad revenue line inside Apple News feeds but cede 30% of it to Apple, whose take-rate now sits directly on top of news content rather than app purchases.
- Advertisers get an article-like sponsored unit inside a curated feed, making Apple a direct seller of news-feed placements for the first time in this product.
Second-order effects
- Publisher resistance over the 30% cut forces Apple's concession on third-party ad delivery, shifting the battleground from whether ads run in News to whose ad server and data control them.
- A guaranteed 70/30 split sets a reference price for platform-distributed news advertising that later programs — lower commissions, shared inventory — have to negotiate against.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, news distribution platforms drift from neutral pipes into competing ad sellers, with the platform take rate becoming the recurring flashpoint between Apple and the publishing industry.
- The 30% figure normalizes applying app-store-style commissions to content surfaces, inviting the same regulatory scrutiny that has followed Apple's other take rates.
The trend: Platform take rates on news distribution are becoming contested terrain, as Apple moves from hosting publisher ads to selling its own inventory at a fixed split.