Apple Tweaks Rules for Children’s Apps and Sign-in
The changes announced at Apple’s developer conference in the summer were significant, and raised concerns among developers that the rules could handicap their ability to do business in a universe that, frankly, offers tough alternatives to ad-based revenue for children’s apps.
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Both of those rules are being updated to add more nuance to their language around third-party services like ads and analytics. In June, Apple announced a very hard-line version of these rule updates that essentially outlawed any third-party ads or analytics software and prohibited any data transmission to third-parties. The new rules offer some opportunities for developers to continue to integrate these into their apps, but also sets out explicit constraints for them.
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Third-party contextual ads may be allowed, but only if those companies providing the ads have publicly documented practices and policies and also offer human review of ad creatives. That certainly limits the options, including most offerings from programmatic services.
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Sign in with Apple will not be required in the following conditions[…] Most of these were sort of assumed to be true but were not initially clear in June.
It’s hard to write good rules.
I only wish they had done this in the first place. If they had talked to the top 20 apps in the Kids category beforehand, they would have realized what a mess an ambiguous ban was going to be.
But, props to them for listening and changing course.
Previously:
