Apple News may have more users than Apple itself estimates it has, Senior Vice President Eddy Cue has admitted. It has been underestimating the number of users of its News app ever since its introduction in
iOS 9, due to an unexpected error that Apple is currently "in the process of fixing." This means that not only does Apple not know the true number of News app users, but the data passed on to publishers about its News-based readership is also inaccurate, potentially affecting advertising sales.
"Our numbers are lower than reality,"
admits Cue to the
Wall Street Journal, advising that Apple missed the error as the team behind it worked on other areas of the service, though stopping short of what the error actually is. "We don't know what the right number is," though Cue believes it's better to undercount traffic than to overcount, especially in data provided to publishers.
While seemingly a small problem for Apple, the issue has a greater impact on publishers. Publishers receive 100 percent of the revenue of advertising on the service they sell, which reduces down to 70 percent if Apple itself sells the ads. Depending on the terms of deals with advertisers, working from lower readership figures could potentially lead to advertising deals that undervalue the publication, in turn losing that publisher revenue.
Cue claims the News app has been used by over 40 million people to date, though declined to give more detailed usage statistics. Publishers are still uncertain about the app's usefulness to their business, with the
Washington Post claiming to be "happy with the traffic" and the relationship with Apple, while the
Atlantic notes it has a good working experience with Apple but harbored concerns about its revenue generation.
"The main thing for us is how big of an audience Apple News can generate, and that's still an open question, said
Atlantic COO Bob Cohn.
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