Apple Advertising & Privacy

Apple-delivered advertising helps people discover apps, products, and services while respecting user privacy. Apple’s advertising platform is designed to protect your information and give you control over how we use your information. Our advertising platform doesn’t share personal data with third parties.

Ads that are delivered by Apple’s advertising platform may appear on the App Store, Apple News, Stocks, and Apple TV app. Apple’s advertising platform does not track you, meaning that it does not link user or device data collected from our apps with user or device data collected from third parties for targeted advertising or advertising measurement purposes, and does not share user or device data with data brokers.

Contextual Information

Contextual information may be used to serve ads to you, such as:

  • Device Information: Your keyboard language settings, device type, OS version, and connection type.
  • Device Location: If Location Services is turned on and you’ve granted permission to the App Store, Apple News, or Apple TV app to access your location, your approximate location may be used to serve you geographically relevant ads. Apple’s advertising platform does not construct profiles from your location, and does not use or store your precise location even if you allow an app to access your precise location. To access these settings, go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services.
  • App Store: Your query when you perform a search, and information about the page you are viewing may be used to serve you a relevant ad.
  • Apple News and Stocks: The type of story you read may be used to select appropriate ads.

Segments

We create segments to deliver personalized ads on the App Store, Apple News, and Stocks. Segments are groups of people who share similar characteristics. Information about you may be used to determine which segments you’re assigned to, and thus, which ads you receive. To protect your privacy, personalized ads are delivered only if more than 5,000 people meet the targeting criteria selected by an advertiser.

We may use information such as the following to assign you to segments:

  • Account Information: Your name, address, age, gender, and devices registered to your Apple ID account. Information such as your first name in your Apple ID registration page or salutation in your Apple ID account may be used to derive your gender. You can update your account information on the Apple ID website.
  • Downloads, Purchases & Subscriptions: The music, movies, books, TV shows, and apps you download, as well as any in-app purchases and subscriptions. We don’t allow targeting based on downloads of a specific app or purchases within a specific app (including subscriptions) from the App Store, unless the targeting is done by that app’s developer.
  • Apple News and Stocks: The topics and categories of the stories you read and the publications you follow, subscribe to, or turn on notifications from.
  • Advertising: Your interactions with ads delivered by Apple’s advertising platform.

When selecting which ad to display from multiple ads for which you are eligible, we may use some of the above-mentioned information, as well as your App Store searches and browsing activity, to determine which ad is likely to be most relevant to you. App Store browsing activity includes the content and apps you tap and view while browsing the App Store. This information is aggregated across users so that it does not identify you. We may also use local, on-device processing to select which ad to display, using information stored on your device, such as the apps you frequently open.

Apple’s advertising platform receives information about the ads you tap and view against a random identifier not tied to your Apple ID.

Apple does not share any personal data with third parties. We make certain non-personal data available to our advertisers and strategic partners that work with Apple to provide our products and services, help Apple market to customers, and sell ads on Apple’s behalf. No Apple Pay transactions or Health app data is accessible to Apple’s advertising platform, or is used for advertising purposes. Apple does not know or make available to advertisers information about your sexual orientation, religious beliefs, or political affiliations.

Advertising Preferences

About This Ad
To understand why a specific ad was shown to you on the App Store, Apple News, or Stocks, tap the Ad button on the ad. This will present the segments and other data, such as demographic information, that were used to determine which ad you received.

Ad Targeting Information
To see information about you that may be used to deliver targeted ads by Apple’s advertising platform, including the segments that you are in.

To see this information on your iOS or iPadOS device, go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Apple Advertising and tap View Ad Targeting Information. On Mac, go to System Settings > Privacy & Security > Privacy, click Apple Advertising, then click View Ad Targeting Information.

If you believe information about you is inaccurate, you can update your Apple ID account information.

Location-Based Ads
If you allow the App Store, Apple News, or Apple TV app to access your location, Apple’s advertising platform may use the approximate current location of your device to provide you with geographically targeted ads.

You can opt out of location-based app functionality including for advertising. On your iOS or iPadOS device, go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services, and either turn off Location Services or set the App Store, Apple News, or Apple TV app permission to Never. On Mac, go to System Settings > Privacy & Security > Privacy, click Location Services, and turn off Location Services or turn off location permissions for News or TV. On tvOS, go to Settings > General > Privacy > Location Services, and turn off Location Services or set the Apple TV app permission to Never.

Apple’s advertising platform does not receive location-based information when you turn off Location Services on your device.

Personalized Ads
If you turn on Personalized Ads, Apple’s advertising platform may use your information to serve ads that are more relevant to you on the App Store, Apple News, and Stocks. Turning off Personalized Ads will prevent Apple from using this information for ad personalization. It may not decrease the number of ads you receive, but the ads may be less relevant to you.

You can turn off Personalized Ads on your iOS or iPadOS device by going to Settings > Privacy & Security > Apple Advertising and tapping to turn off Personalized Ads. On Mac, go to System Settings > Privacy & Security > Privacy, click Apple Advertising, and deselect Personalized Ads. The Personalized Ads option may be unavailable if you are a minor, have a managed account, or are in a location where Apple does not deliver advertising to its apps.

Preventing Fraud and Other Malicious Activity

To help identify and prevent fraud and other malicious activity within ads, Apple’s advertising platform may use information about your searches on the App Store, the ads you view and tap, and the apps you purchase and download from ads. This information is collected against a random identifier not tied to your Apple ID.

At all times, information collected by Apple will be treated in accordance with Apple’s Privacy Policy, which can be found at www.apple.com/privacy

Published Date: April 6, 2023