Read Time: 7 minutes
IN THIS ARTICLE
Learn how predictive targeting on Apple News delivers premium, high-intent audiences without manual segmentation.
What Is This Guide For?
Apple News is one of the most premium environments available in Campaign Builder. While it works a little differently to other channels, this guide will walk you through what makes it powerful—and how to make the most of it.
Overview
Apple News Native Ads are delivered within a premium, subscription-based, logged-in environment that is unique among amplification channels in Campaign Builder. Unlike other channels, specific audience targeting cannot be overlaid.
This guide outlines what the Apple News Audience looks like and how Predictive Audience Targeting is applied in order to optimise towards the strongest performing pockets of the Apple News consumers.
Who is the Apple News Audience?
While you can’t apply audience targeting on Apple News, you’re still reaching a highly defined group. Thanks to Apple’s logged-in environment, we have strong insights into who they are and how they behave.
Here’s what we know:
Demographic Overview
Includes both male and female audiences, with no heavy skew.
Proportion of monthly unique visitors by age:
72% of users are aged 40 and over
14-39 years - 28%
40-54 years - 37%
55+ - 35%
Demographics indicates that it is a highly effective environment to target people middle-aged onwards including parents, professionals, and people considering/recently retired.
Socioeconomic Profile
This is an affluent, high-intent audience - 64% more likely to have household incomes above $200k AUD.
This indicates strong purchasing power and affluent lifestyle behaviours.
Interests and Behavioural Traits
The Apple News audience are curious, connected, and financially engaged. Compared to the general Australian population, they’re >2x more likely to be:
Health technologists (2.9x) - f
Early Adopters (2.8x) - Likely to try new technology, services, and products.
Jet-Setters (2.7x) -
Parental Investors (2.3x) - Often with school-aged children, financially engaged and seeking to make educated investment decisions
Tech Trackers (2.1x) -
Shopaholics (2.1x) -
Why Audience Targeting Isn’t Applied on Apple News
Unlike other channels, Apple News does not support audience segmentation overlays (such as demographic or interest-based targeting). Instead, ads are served and optimised by leveraging Predictive Audience Targeting - but that doesn’t mean your reach is generic.
In fact, Apple’s predictive targeting often performs just as well - if not better - than traditional overlays.
What Is Predictive Audience Targeting?
Predictive Audience Targeting leverages:
AI and machine learning
Real-time behavioural signals
Continuous performance feedback loops
This allows Apple to constantly optimise delivery toward users most likely to engage with your content, measured in terms of engagement time and quality traffic to long-form articles.
It’s important to note that the effectiveness of this model often rivals or outperforms manual targeting (when A|B tested against Native Ad environments that allow specific audience targeting), particularly when driving high-value engagement (e.g. scroll depth, outbound clicks, time on page).
Apple News in the Channel Mix
Apple News Native Ads deliver:
100% viewable impressions
Seamless placements within a highly trusted editorial content environment.
A long-form to long-form user journey, which typically results in higher dwell times since the user is moving from long-form environment to another
Cost-efficient CPMs,
A few things to be aware of:
No video formats are accepted.
The activation window is longer (due to Apple’s platform approval).
Does not support additional demographic or audience targeting overlays
Geographic targeting is also limited ‘
AU: State based targeting can be applied.
UK: National Only
Audience scale is limited to Apple News users, so it should be part of a multi-channel strategy.
Best Use Cases
Choose Apple News when you want to:
Deliver high-quality article views to affluent, contextually relevant users.
Drive attention for long-form, editorial-style content (e.g., finance, parenting, travel, technology, lifestyle).
Reach high-quality readers in a premium, logged-in environment
Reach audiences less active on social media.
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