Apple started accepting Maps ad campaign creation from businesses in the United States and Canada on 14 August 2026 at 18:45 ET, and is running a promotional credit worth 15% of spend for advertisers who set up now. Ads are not serving yet: Apple says delivery begins in the coming weeks and has not attached a date to that phrase, so what opened on 14 August is the campaign builder rather than the auction.
PPC Land reported the opening on 14 August 2026, including the two placements Apple is selling, the caps on the promotional credit, and the category rules that decide who is allowed to buy. The distance between those disclosed details and everything Apple has left unpublished is the part that matters to anyone about to move budget.
What Apple opened on 14 August 2026
Businesses in the United States and Canada can now build an Apple Maps ad campaign. That is the extent of what went live. Apple has not started delivering those ads, and the only timing language attached to delivery is "coming weeks" with no date behind it. A campaign built the day after the opening therefore sits in a queue of unknown length before it can spend anything.
The intent was on the record before the interface was. Apple CFO Kevan Parekh referenced the Maps advertising plan on the company's 30 April earnings call, which told the market months in advance that this was coming. What changed on 14 August is that a buying surface exists and accepts campaigns from a defined set of businesses in two countries.
Relevant Audience wrote about the category exclusions on 21 July 2026, before the buying interface opened, when the rules for who could advertise were published ahead of the launch itself. The exclusions have not moved since. What is new is that the door is open for the categories that were always going to be allowed through it.
The two placements Apple is selling
Apple is offering two placements. The first is Suggested Places, which surfaces a business to a user before that user has searched for anything. The second sits inside Maps search results, after a user has typed a query. Those are two genuinely different products sold under one campaign type, and an advertiser should not treat them as interchangeable inventory.
Suggested Places is the unusual one. A placement that appears before a search means there is no query to match against, so relevance has to be inferred from something else: location, time, category, past behaviour, or some combination Apple has not described. Anyone who buys search advertising is used to a keyword or a search theme carrying intent into the auction. A pre-search placement removes that anchor. The source does not describe how Apple decides which business fills a Suggested Places slot, and that is not a small omission for a media buyer trying to forecast performance.
The Maps search results placement is the more familiar one. A user searches for a business or a category, and a paid result can appear among the organic ones. That is close in shape to what local advertisers already understand from other map surfaces, which makes it the easier of the two to model, at least in principle. In practice it still cannot be modelled, because Apple has not published what an impression or a click costs.
The 15% credit and the caps around it
Apple is running a promotional credit worth 15% of spend. It is capped at 1,000 USD per month and at a maximum of 12,000 USD across twelve months. It arrives as a statement credit in the month following the one in which it was earned, so it is a rebate against a bill rather than budget you can spend inside the platform.
Work the arithmetic backwards and the caps describe the advertiser Apple is aiming at. A 15% credit that tops out at 1,000 USD a month stops rewarding spend above roughly 6,667 USD a month. Below that line the credit scales with what you spend. Above it, every additional dollar carries no promotional benefit at all. The twelve month ceiling of 12,000 USD is exactly twelve monthly caps, so the programme is built for an advertiser who can hold near that monthly figure for a year rather than one who spends heavily in a single quarter.
There is a timing problem sitting underneath the offer. The credit period runs for twelve months, but campaign creation opened on 14 August while ad delivery is only promised for the coming weeks. No spend can occur before delivery starts, and no date has been given for delivery. The start of the promotional period is therefore undefined in what has been published. An advertiser cannot yet say which twelve months the 12,000 USD ceiling covers.
The table below sets out what Apple stated against what remains open. Every row comes from the announcement as reported.
| Detail | What Apple stated | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Campaign creation | Open from 14 August 2026, 18:45 ET | Live, United States and Canada only |
| Ad delivery | Coming weeks | No date given |
| Promotional credit | 15% of spend, paid as a statement credit the month after it is earned | Start of the credit period undefined |
| Credit caps | 1,000 USD per month, 12,000 USD over twelve months | Stated |
| Pricing and auction | Not disclosed | No CPC, no CPM, no auction mechanics, no reporting spec |
What Apple did not disclose
Apple published no pricing model with the opening. There is no CPC, no CPM, and no statement of whether the two placements are priced the same way. There is no description of the auction: no mention of what advertisers bid on, how a winner is chosen, or whether quality or relevance signals affect placement. There is no reporting specification either, so nobody outside Apple knows which metrics the platform will return, at what granularity, or whether conversion data will be attributable to a campaign at all.
Those three gaps are load bearing. Without pricing you cannot forecast cost. Without auction mechanics you cannot write an optimisation plan. Without a reporting specification you cannot tell your finance team what evidence you will have at the end of the first month. An advertiser who signs up on the strength of the credit is agreeing to spend against a rate card that has not been published.
The numbers in Apple's pitch, and what they leave out
Apple's own case cites more than 1 billion monthly business searches across the United States and Canada, measured from January to December 2025. It also cites a claimed conversion rate of 1 in 2 on business searches, measured from March 2025 to March 2026. Both figures come from Apple and describe the two countries where buying just opened.
The 1 in 2 figure deserves care. A conversion rate of 50% on business searches is far above what most paid channels report, which almost certainly means Apple is counting something broader than a purchase. A tap on directions, a phone call, a website visit, or a save could all sit inside a definition like that. The source does not carry Apple's definition of a conversion for that measurement, so an advertiser cannot map the number onto their own conversion accounting. Treat it as a statement of Maps engagement, not as a promised campaign outcome.
The search volume figure is easier to read. More than 1 billion business searches a month is a real audience, and Apple measured it across exactly the two countries where buying just opened. It says nothing about how much of that volume will ever be monetised, how many slots exist per session, or what share of searches will show an ad.
Which categories can buy and which cannot
Eligibility is set by business category. Restaurants, retail, hospitality and travel are eligible. Home services, alcohol, dating, gambling, religion, bail bonds, crypto ATMs and medical services are excluded. The eligible list reads like the categories where a Maps search already ends in a visit, and the excluded list reads like the categories where regulators, sensitivity or fraud risk make a map placement awkward.
Two exclusions are worth flagging for anyone budgeting in a services business. Home services being excluded removes a whole family of local advertisers who are among the heaviest spenders on other local surfaces. Medical services being excluded removes clinics and practices, which are usually a strong fit for proximity based advertising. If your business sits in either group, this launch does not apply to you at all, whatever country you operate in.
What to check before building an Apple Maps campaign
The first check is whether you are eligible at all, by country and by category. Both gates apply. A restaurant group with locations in the United States passes both. A Bangkok clinic fails both. A retail brand with Canadian stores passes on country and category but still faces the delivery date question.
The second check is your underlying place data. Ads on a map sit on top of a business listing, and a listing with the wrong hours, the wrong pin, or the wrong category will waste paid clicks the same way it wastes free ones. That work costs nothing and pays off whether or not you ever buy a Maps ad, which makes it the sensible first move while delivery is still pending. It is the same discipline that sits behind any serious local SEO programme.
The third check is measurement. Because Apple has not published a reporting specification, you cannot assume the numbers will land in the same place as the rest of your paid reporting. Decide now who owns the channel, where the spend will be recorded, and what you will do at the end of month one if the platform returns less detail than your Google Ads reporting does. Set that expectation with whoever approves the budget before the first invoice, not after it.
The fourth check is where the money comes from. A 15% credit is a discount, not a performance result. Moving budget out of a channel you can measure and into one where pricing, auction and reporting are all undisclosed is a trade that should be made with a small test budget and a fixed review date, not with a reallocation.
What this means for Thai marketers
Nothing is buyable from Thailand. The opening covers businesses in the United States and Canada, and the source says nothing about Thailand, Singapore, Japan or any other APAC market. There is no announced timeline for a wider rollout, so any date you hear for a Thai launch is speculation.
It matters in two narrower cases. A Thai company with a registered business presence in the United States or Canada, in an eligible category, may be able to buy for those locations. And a Thai brand selling to North American customers should note that a new map placement is being created in a market where they compete, even if they cannot buy it themselves.
For everyone else the useful takeaway is directional. Map surfaces are becoming paid inventory, and the free listing work that determines whether you appear at all keeps getting more valuable, not less. Getting your business data accurate across every map and directory that carries it is the part you control today, and it feeds the same foundations as your SEO work. When Apple does open more markets, the advertisers with clean listings will be the ones able to act on day one.
Frequently asked questions (FAQ)
Can I run Apple Maps ads in Thailand?
No. Apple opened campaign creation to businesses in the United States and Canada only, and the source says nothing about Thailand or any other APAC market. No rollout timeline for other countries was announced, so there is no date to plan around.
When will Apple Maps ads actually start showing?
Apple has not said. The only language attached to delivery is that ads will start in the coming weeks, with no date given, even though campaign creation opened on 14 August 2026. That gap also leaves the start of the promotional credit period undefined.
How much does an Apple Maps ad cost?
Nobody outside Apple knows, because Apple disclosed no pricing model. There is no published CPC, no CPM, and no description of the auction that decides which advertiser appears. Anyone building a forecast right now is guessing.
Is the 15% credit cash back?
No, it is a statement credit applied in the month following the one in which it was earned. It is worth 15% of spend, capped at 1,000 USD per month and 12,000 USD across twelve months, which means spend above roughly 6,667 USD in a month earns no extra credit.
Can any business buy these ads?
No, eligibility is set by category. Restaurants, retail, hospitality and travel are eligible, while home services, alcohol, dating, gambling, religion, bail bonds, crypto ATMs and medical services are excluded. The source does not state that the published lists are exhaustive, so check your own category before planning anything.
Where this leaves you
A new paid surface opened in two countries with a discount attached and most of its mechanics still unpublished. That is a reason to read carefully, not a reason to move money. If you sell into the United States or Canada and sit in an eligible category, get your listing data clean and run a small controlled test once delivery starts. If you do not, the useful action is the same one it was last month: make sure the free version of your business information is correct everywhere it appears. If you want a second opinion on how your local and paid setup should respond as map inventory becomes buyable, we are happy to look at it with you.
