• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, April 16, 2025

Apple dropped the "Search" from Search Ads and rebranded its advertising business to Apple Ads to better represent its expanding ad placements across the App Store.

Similar to other ads businesses like Amazon Advertising, which changed its name to Amazon Ads in September 2018, the rebranding is part of an effort to simplify and unify advertising offerings.

Amazon's ad business was formerly known as Amazon Media Group, Amazon Marketing Services (AMS), and Amazon Advertising Platform (AAP).

Apple’s rebrand reflects its growing advertising footprint beyond App Store search results. Some take this as a signal that it is looking at a more aggressive play in the broader digital ad market.

There are changes coming to Apple’s ad business. Earlier this month, the company shared updates to its attribution kit.

The post explained how “Apple Search Ads will soon register with AdAttributionKit, formerly referred to as SKAdNetwork, to support increasing developer requests to view their Apple Search Ads campaigns alongside app ads from third-party platforms.”

The post -- published on April 4 -- explains how AdAttributionKit contains records for all app conversions from the Apple App Store, providing developers a view across multiple marketing channels to help them understand if their ads are driving results.

Apple Ads registered with AdAttributionKit on April 10, giving developers a comprehensive and accurate understanding of the channels drive their app conversions.

Apple Ads registration allows developers to evaluate their Apple Ads campaigns, and the same attribution logic of AdAttributionKit applies to Apple Ads as is used across other AdAttributionKit-registered ad platforms.

The company said it will continue to maintain the AdServices API, as augmenting AdAttributionKit with the AdServices attribution API provides additional information for developers to optimize the campaigns they are running on the App Store.