Apple Search Ads
and privacy.

Privacy is at the center of everything we do. Apple Search Ads has been built from the ground up to respect privacy. Our advertising platform is designed to protect users’ information and give them control over how we use it for advertising.

No user tracking or
data sharing

Apple Search Ads doesn’t buy or share users’ personal information with other companies. We don’t track people by linking user or device data collected from Apple apps with user or device data collected from third parties for advertising targeting or measurement. And we don’t share user or device data with data brokers.

Users’ Apple Pay transactions, Health app data, and HomeKit app data are not used by Apple Search Ads to deliver ads.

Easy control for users

Users may view and limit the personal information Apple uses to deliver relevant ads to them. They may also prevent location-based information from being used to determine which ads they see. More about ad preferences

Minors protected

Apple Search Ads doesn’t serve ads to any user whose Apple ID is registered to a minor under 13 years of age or set up as a Managed Apple ID. Nor do we collect, use, or disclose any information from them.

Apple Search Ads also doesn’t allow explicit targeting of people whose Apple ID is registered to a user under the age of 18.

Safe content

Every app on the App Store goes through a thorough review, as do the assets used to promote it. Only these approved assets can be used in Apple Search Ads campaigns.

Transparency and
disclosure

All ads have an “Ad” mark so customers can identify the ads as paid placements. They can tap this mark to see the information used to serve the ad.

How we connect customers and advertisers.

Apple Search Ads empowers advertisers, while protecting individuals.

Advertisers have the ability to deliver targeted ads to customer segments, which are groups of people with similar characteristics. Each segment must contain at least 5000 people, which ensures that no customer can be individually targeted.

To ensure we deliver the most relevant ads, Apple Search Ads may use the following:

Account Information

This includes the information a customer includes in their Apple ID account.

App Store Data

This includes information provided by developers to define and categorize their apps. It also includes insights derived from non-personal historical search terms, App Store downloads, App Store browsing activity, and in-app purchases made through the App Store.

App Transaction Data

This includes historical information about users’ transactions on the App Store, including apps they’ve downloaded and in-app purchases they’ve made.

Contextual Information

This includes a customer’s device type, iOS version, time of day, device location, and search query.

Developer Data

Consistent with Apple’s policies on tracking, this may include information that individual developers have collected through their relationship with users based on their direct interactions with them. This information is only available for use by the specific developer (and their authorized agents) in the creation and display of Apple Search Ads, and is not available for use by other third parties.