Apple's Revenue Soars In Q2; LinkedIn Reaches A Milestone

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Cook Your Goose

Apple shattered Q2 revenue records for practically all of its products when it reported earnings yesterday. And its services revenue, Apple’s fees from in-app sales and subscriptions, broke an all-time quarterly record – which is ridiculous, because the lazy summer months should not hold a candle to the Q4 holiday season. One investor asked how changes to the IDFA might impact the trajectory of the advertising business within services. CEO Tim Cook gave a vintage Apple response: ignoring the advertising implications and stressing the connection Apple has with its customers. “In terms of IDFA or advertising in general, I take it your question is around ATT [Apple’s new consent pop-ups that require all non-Apple apps to gain consent to track users for advertising],” Cook said. “With ATT we’ve been getting quite a bit of positive customer reaction to being able to make the decision whether to be tracked or not. And it seems to be going very well from a user point of view.”

Updated Links

Microsoft-owned LinkedIn reached a milestone on Tuesday when it reported more than $10 billion in annual revenue, a first for the business-first social net, GeekWire reports. LinkedIn had a strong quarter, taking in nearly $3 billion in revenue, a 46% year-over-year increase. Microsoft acquired LinkedIn for $26 billion in 2016 – and that bet has paid off, according to CEO Satya Nadella. LinkedIn also scored another first – it raked in more than $1 billion in ad revenue last quarter, almost double last year (though that was the worst of the pandemic advertising drop-off). According to eMarketer, LinkedIn is expected to take in 1.4% of digital ad revenue in the US this year. And while that’s a slight increase from 2019, it still pales in comparison to Facebook (25.4%), Google (28.7%) and Amazon (10.7%).

Let The Commerce Commence

Twitter toyed around with “Buy Now” buttons in 2015. But it put ecommerce plans on the back burner to revitalize the core ad platform. “We eventually stepped back from our shopping pursuits to focus on other areas,” as revenue product leader Bruce Falck put it in a blog post. But Twitter is back in commerce mode, with the announcement that it will test launch shopping pages and create a Merchant Advisory Board of savvy sellers on the platform. Businesses will be able to create shoppable profile pages that link to product pages and payment processing via an in-app browser. No merchants have been named as partners yet, and the test is live only for english-speaking US users with iOS devices. Every walled garden is all-in on commerce right now. Earlier this week, Pinterest introduced an affiliate program and Shoppable Pins, a tool for content creators to monetize posts (or pins, rather) on its platform. A week ago, Snapchat partnered with the ecommerce marketplace Verishop on an in-app shopping hub. Google likewise attributed its record-shattering Q2 revenue this year largely to new retail and ecommerce gains.

But Wait, There’s More!

Sports media companies eye affiliate businesses as sports betting heats up. [Insider]

Snapchat’s built-in map will start recommending restaurants, places to visit. [The Verge]

Infutor’s data assets are now available via the AWS Data Exchange. [release]