Apple News criticized for running low-quality and deceptive ads



Apple News, a news aggregation app provided by Apple, serves ads, which have been criticized for being low-quality and even fraudulent.

Apple dinged over low-quality, scammy-looking ads on Apple News - 9to5Mac

https://9to5mac.com/2026/02/06/apple-dinged-over-low-quality-scammy-looking-ads-on-apple-news/



Apple has partnered with Taboola, an advertising technology company, to run ads on its news aggregation app, Apple News, which is available in the US, Canada, the UK, and Australia and has millions of unique visitors per month.

Taboola is one of the world's largest advertising technology companies, boasting a market capitalization of $1 billion (approximately 157 billion yen), but 9to5Mac has described it as 'widely known for delivering low-quality, untrustworthy, and shady ads.' Axios was first to report on Apple's partnership with Taboola.

Markdown developer John Gruber wrote on his blog Daring Fireball , 'Apple News ads, at least the ones I've seen, already look like Taboola ads. The worst part is they're incredibly repetitive.' He added, 'I don't think Apple partnering with Taboola is good news, and I don't expect any noticeable changes in the quality or frequency of ads. Maybe we'll see more variety in ads.'



Kirk McElhern, a veteran technology writer, posted an article on his blog titled '

I think all Apple News ads are a scam ,' pointing out, 'I use Apple News to keep up with topics that I can't find through my paid sources. But I'm not going to pay the exorbitant fee Apple is charging for Apple News+ (£13, about 2,780 yen) because, while there are more and more publications to subscribe to, there are ads. And these ads have gotten worse recently, as many, if not most, of the ads look like scams, and probably contain some scams mixed in.'

McElhahn posted the following screenshots of fraudulent ads on Apple News: The ads McElhahn showed were from companies whose domains had only recently been created, and at least one of them had been warned by the Better Business Bureau , a non-profit advertising industry association, for 'using notoriously misleading tactics.'



9to5Mac said, 'The entire ad market is rife with bad actors exploiting the system, bypassing security checks, and committing fraud, but Apple's continued use of low-quality ads makes it all the more jarring as the company seeks to introduce more advertising across its ecosystem.'

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in Web Service, Posted by logu_ii