Apple's Rivals Bled After It Unleashed Privacy Moves — Now The iPhone Maker Reportedly Plans To Double Its Advertising Staff

Apple Inc AAPL is reportedly looking to double its advertising workforce after the company’s sweeping privacy changes decimated its rivals’ revenues.

What Happened: The iPhone maker is looking to add 216 more positions in this category to its team of 250 employees who work on advertising platforms. The number of positions is four times the 56 it was hoping to fill in 2020, reported the Financial Times, citing LinkedIn data.

Apple has disputed the figures put forward by Financial Times but did not provide further details.

The advertisements put out by the company say its goals are that of “redefining advertising” for a “privacy-centric” world, according to the report.

The jobs that the Tim Cook-led company is filling span from product designers and managers to data engineers and sales specialists.

Most of the roles are reportedly in the U.S. but there are also positions in Europe, China, India, Japan and Singapore.

“That’s a giant team — that’s bigger than most small companies,” said Jade Arenstein, the global service lead at Incubeta, a South-Africa-based market performance firm, according to FT. “Wherever there is smoke there is fire, and that’s definitely some smoke.”
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Why It Matters: Apple’s privacy changes, introduced in iOS14, left Meta Platforms Inc META fuming.

The changes introduced in June 2021 reduced the efficacy of Facebook advertising. It also caused an erosion in the revenue of Twitter Inc. TWTR and Facebook.

However, the financial impact was limited on Google, the search arm of Alphabet Inc GOOGL GOOG.

Zeta Global, CEO David Steinberg said that Apple was “Machiavellian” as it adopted privacy rules that forced its rivals to rebuild their ad platform while it created an opening for itself.

“They could build out (their advertising business) dramatically (and) the ‘air cover’ is they are protecting the consumer’s privacy,” said the executive of the marketing technology company, according to FT.

Price Action: On Friday, Apple shares closed 1.4% lower at $155.81 and fell 0.1% in the after-hours trading.

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