- Apple is gearing up for its biggest ever presence at the Cannes Lions advertising festival.
- He has reserved a dedicated space at the iconic Carlton Hotel for meetings and panels.
- There is growing industry speculation that Apple is planning a big commercial at WWDC.
Apple usually plays it so quietly at major industry events that you wouldn’t even know the company attended.
His delegation at conferences and exhibitions is known to turn his lanyards around so that passers-by cannot read their name or company on their badges.
But at this year’s Cannes Lions festival, the advertising industry’s annual boondoggle on the South Riviera that begins on June 19, Apple plans to pull off a big, high-profile splash for attendees. He has rented space at the top of the iconic Carlton Hotel, located on the bustling Promenade de la Croisette, according to several advertising industry sources.
There, Apple executives will hold meetings, lunches and drinks. It also plans a week of programming, with panel topics expected to include sports on Apple TV+, Apple News, apps and expanding Apple’s advertising offering, the sources said.
Apple did not respond to a request for comment.
Apple executives took to the main stage at Cannes before discussing Apple’s marketer perspective. But its increased presence this year comes at a time when the stakes for Apple as an ad seller have never been higher. The company is expected to boost advertising revenue as it seeks to expand its services business, which brought in $21 billion in the first three months of the year.
He has already invested heavily in building a strong ad sales business. As Insider previously reported, Apple is building a demand-side platform, software that would allow advertisers to buy ads on a range of its ads and services using automation. It also started selling ads and sponsorship packages on its exclusive Major League Soccer shows this year.
But Apple faces significant hurdles in capturing advertising dollars, as competitors like YouTube, Disney and Netflix are also ramping up streaming TV advertising business and actively courting advertisers. Apple has to overcome some distinct drawbacks.
Sasha Auzins, co-founder of marketing technology consultancy Elaboration, said that to win over marketers, Apple’s ad executives will need to focus on measurement and flexibility in negotiation and execution. Which was “not necessarily a strong point of Apple advertising in the past,” Auzins said.
“Because its reach is much lower than Disney or Netflix, it may not be able to take advantage of the trend of higher and higher CPMs,” the Insider Intelligence analyst said. Daniel Konstantinovic in a 2022 report.
Apple is also trying to diversify its advertising offer and capture the big budgets usually spent by TV advertisers. Today, Apple’s ad business consists largely of search ads sold in the App Store, which Insider Intelligence predicts will generate $8.7 billion this year.
Evercore ISI analysts predicted last year that Apple would expand advertising to more of its services – such as Maps and Apple TV – and could potentially generate $30 billion in ad revenue over the next four months. years. Eric Seufert, media strategist and founder of the blog Mob Dev Memo, said maps and podcasts are obvious advertising opportunities for Apple.
Other industry sources speculate that Apple’s significant presence at Cannes will follow a big publicity announcement at its Worldwide Developers Conference, which kicks off at its Apple Park headquarters in California on June 5. Apple is also widely rumored to unveil a mixed reality headset at WWDC, as reported by outlets like The Verge. This would be an opportunity to incentivize brands and other creative businesses to create content.
A marketing executive, who asked not to be identified, said Apple’s Cannes splash was ironic given the company’s love-hate relationship with advertising.
Apple co-founder Steve Jobs launched his iAd mobile advertising network in 2010 with the audacious ambition of capturing 50% of the mobile advertising market, but it was shut down six years later. And in 2021, Apple rolled out its AppTrackingTransparency privacy update that threw the ad industry into a spin and removed some ad business from Meta, YouTube, and Snap.
“How will privacy and ads work?” said the director of marketing.
