The tech giant currently has around 250 people on the ad platforms team, and it wants to fill 216 more positions, the Financial Times (FT) reported.
The news comes about a year and a half after the company’s new privacy changes, which have been said to hurt bigger rivals in the industry. The rules made it more difficult to tailor ads to iPhone users, so companies had to rebuild their ad infrastructure. That caused Snap, Twitter and Facebook parent Meta to lose billions of dollars in revenue, according to the report.
Apple’s ad business, once just fledgling, has now been “incredibly fast growing,” going from just a few hundred million dollars of revenue in the late 2010s to around $5 billion this year, the report stated, citing a job ad.
The digital ad industry thinks Apple could be trying to expand quickly and set rules that give it an “unfair advantage,” according to critics, per the report.
Apple has been a target of scrutiny by regulators for various reasons over the years. The Department of Justice (DOJ) is readying an antitrust lawsuit against the company.
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Read more: DOJ Preps Apple Antitrust Suit
Prosecutors could file the suit by the end of the year.
The DOJ investigation into Apple stems from accusations three years ago that the company had used its market power to hamper app developers and other tech companies.
Apple isn’t unique in this regard; the DOJ is also looking into rival Google to see if that company has exceeded its authority as a broker and auctioneer of digital ads and taken away business from competitors.
Google has proposed splitting up parts of its ad business to stave off the lawsuit.
