Apple eyes expanding digital ad business: report

Apple is looking to expand its digital advertising business, as it aims to change its business from just selling products to providing services on them as well.

{mosads}The company has met Snap Inc., Pinterest Inc. and other companies to discuss being apart of a network that would show Apple ads in their apps, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Apple currently displays ads in its app store that totaled $1 billion in revenue last year. The new network would aim to significantly increase that.

The report did not specify a timeline for Apple’s new ad products.

It’s also unclear what type of data, if any at all, that Apple would use to potentially target ads. Its CEO, Tim Cook, has said that Apple prides itself on not selling its users data and has blasted companies like Facebook for doing so.

“We could make a ton of money if we monetized our customers. If our customers were our product,” Cook said in an interview with Recode and MSNBC in April.

“We care about the user experience. And we’re not going to traffic in your personal life. I think it’s an invasion of privacy. I think it’s — privacy to us is a human right. It’s a civil liberty,” he added.

If the plans to come fruition, the ads would position Apple to enter into markets dominated by companies like Facebook and Google which dominate the digital ad space.