Apple News, the company’s content-aggregating platform, has begun a trial program that allows a handful of partners to inject ads from Google’s DoubleClick For Publishers system into their pages in the News app for iPhone and iPad.
According to AdAge yesterday citing publishing executives familiar with the trial, big name partners like Condé Nast, Gannett, Time Inc. and CNN have been in talks with Apple for months about potential changes regarding how the News app serves up ads.
The test should roll out to everyone before the end of the year.
Given that many publishers already use Google’s DoubleClick platform, they can simply extend their current campaigns to Apple News using their own technology. However, a few hurdles remain on the way to seamless integration.
Safari now resets data collected by cookies and the same data constraints prevent publishers from offering highly targeted ads on the News platform. That negatively impacts the price of inventory, cutting it by at least half, according to one top publishing partner.
Apple News has close to 50 million monthly U.S. visitors, according to ComScore.
The app may soon allow readers to access subscription articles from the likes of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and others “for cents at a time,” said a recent report.