Gambling, Sex, and Red Pills: The Worst Ads We've Seen in Apple's App Store (so Far)

The controversy over Apple’s App Store was set off by ads for apps centered around gambling. Ads for gambling apps were littered across the App Store almost immediately after Apple allowed ads, with a few in surprisingly inappropriate places (more on that later). Marco Arment, perhaps most famous for his work at Tumblr, took to Twitter to complain about the ads on the page for his app Overcast.

Within 24 hours, Apple announced a freeze on gambling apps, telling MacRumors, “We have paused ads related to gambling and a few other categories on App Store product pages.” Apple didn’t say whether gambling ads would eventually be allowed to return, nor did the company respond to Gizmodo’s questions about the issue.

Twitter user @7w33t3r spotted this gem, and ad for PragerU, a “conservative nonprofit that is focused on changing minds through the creative use of digital media,” as the organization puts it. It is not, however, a university, even though it’s called itself one.

PragerU has dedicated itself to fighting against a number of issues, including gun control, the $15 minimum wage, and democracy (literally, one of their video defending they Electoral College said, “pure democracies do not work”).

PragerU works to leverage the internet to turn young people into conservatives through provocative, often misleading videos. Google, Meta, and now Apple seem happy to take PragerU’s ad dollars.

Here’s an interesting one, an ad for Airbnb... right above a search result for Airbnb, first found by Twitter user @callumj.

You’ve seen this before, but the reason for it is a little surprising. Companies let advertisers pick just about any search term they want when they’re setting up ad campaigns. That can create a problem for business. For example, if you’re Walgreens, CVS could pay for their name to show up first in the ad space at the top of the screen when people search type in Walgreens.

That means companies often have to buy ads that show up when people are already searching for the name of their businesses. That’s not really advertising, it’s paying to prevent other people from stealing your customers.

Google is notorious for this problem, and some companies have told me in the past that they believe the problem amounts to mafia-style extortion. Pay up, or you won’t be at the top of search results for your own company. Apple seems to be following in Google’s foot steps.

This might be the most surprising example. Sure, people who are looking for an app to help with recovery to gambling addiction are probably interested in gambling. They’re too interested in it. That’s the problem, which is probably why it’s poor form to advertise it to them. But here we are, with an ad for the gambling app Jackpot World, seen on the page for the gambling addiction recovery app RecoverMe.

Apple, and Jackpot World, for that matter, probably didn’t do this on purpose. The system likely just showed the ad because it had the word gambling on it. Still, it’s the kind of problem you could have seen coming.

This was found by someone with the Twitter handle @hot_doggin_jon, which may be the first time those words have appeared together in the media. Hopefully it won’t be the last.

The aptly named Twitter user @BasicAppleGuy saw this ad for Hinge, a dating app, on the page for an app from the Gottman Institute, an organization dedicated to helping couple’s work out their differences. Sure, it’s a page about relationships, so dating is relevant, but maybe Apple shouldn’t be encouraging people to see other people when they’re clearly trying to work it out with their partners.

@BasicAppleGuy is back with another hit, this time an ad for “adult video chat” on the page for the Apple Books app, of all places. Porn isn’t allowed on the app store, so you have to assume that everything that happens on LiveFun is strictly PG.

Again, Apple didn’t respond to our request for comment.

Here’s one more gambling ad for good luck. Twitter’s @simonbs caught this ad for Omaha-style poker on Apple’s list of recommended kids apps. More than any other example, this demonstrates that the App Store ad role out could have been handled with more care.