News Corp says Apple News is ‘important source’ of revenue

The best way to read news on your Mac? Maybe.

Apple has extended its News app deal with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. The two corporations have extended their existing multi-year agreement which lets stories from Murdoch media appear in News and News+.

Apple News expected to drive subs and ads revenue

The deal was revealed in News Corp’s financial results announcement. Announcing FHFY22 profits of c.$1 billion, Chief Executive Robert Thomson said:

“The landmark agreements with Big Tech continued to benefit our journalism and our bottom line. In addition to the substantial deals with Google and Facebook, we expanded our multi-year global agreement with Apple, which is expected to be an important source of subscriptions and of advertising revenue for our news sites around the world.”

News Corps news media segment saw 11% growth on the year ago quarter and 15% on the same six-month period in FY20.

The company particularly cited recovery in the ads market, growing subscription revenues and foreign currency fluctuations as drivers for this. It explained that digital revenues represented 34% of news media revenue in the quarter.

It is to be hoped these positive sounds from News Corp. will ring loudly enough that other publishers will begin supporting the platform.

[Also read: Apple offers local focus to juice Apple News service]

News Corp didn’t give any additional insight into Apple News and its impact on earnings, but did make mention of “the enhanced deal with Apple” during the financial call.

Is Apple about to boost ads on its platforms?

While the deal seems to be driving optimism in the Wall Street Journal’s publisher, the one more thing moment in all of this feels very much like optimism around advertising models.

This suggests Apple may tweak the Apple News platform with some effective advertising delivery enhancements, likely answering some of the challenges of individual privacy against the need to track ads success.

Apple already offers publishers 100% of ads a publisher sells and 70% from ads inventory sold by Apple. It also offers the News Partner Program. Services and Apple is an ongoing story. Apple One is quickly winning converts and we know that Apple News is experiencing growing use.

Most recently it emerged that Apple News is already more popular then the BBC news app.

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