Apple News Gains 'Native Banner' Ad Format for Sponsored Posts

Apple recently added a new ad format designed to allow publishers to share sponsored posts alongside regular news content in Apple News, according to developer specification document [PDF] that was shared by Business Insider.

The document features all of the different ad types available within Apple News, including a new "Native Banners" feature. With Native Banners, which are meant to blend in with standard content, ads can be displayed right in the news feed with regular Apple News articles.

Native ads display directly in the content feeds, inline with News articles, and are intended to blend in with their surrounding. They will be set in the default font used in News.

According to Apple, these native ads include a title, text excerpt, and a small image, and in an example image provided, the format looks quite similar to the standard article list format in the Apple News app. Sponsored posts will, however, be denoted by text that lets readers know the content is sponsored.

Each ad includes a title, text excerpt and a small image, and is distinguished by a 'Sponsored' callout. The sponsored advertiser name is optional. If an advertiser name is not provided, the reader will see 'Sponsored' in the banner.

As Business Insider points out, publishers can share sponsored news posts on Apple News at the current time as long as content is marked as sponsored in metadata, but this new ad format will give publishers a clear way to monetize sponsored content and it adds tools for explicitly branding sponsored content.

Apple is also rumored to be adding support for subscription content from publishers with paywalls to the Apple News app in the future.