Wednesday, December 24, 2025

More App Store Ad Spots

Apple:

When a user searches on the App Store, your ad can appear at the top of their search results. And starting in 2026, we’ll be introducing more ads to increase opportunity in search results.

[…]

Your ad will run in either the existing position — at the top of search results — or further down in search results. If you have a search results campaign running, your ad will be automatically eligible for all available positions, but you can’t select or bid for a particular one.

James Thomson:

Me: I really hate the advert when you search on the App Store, I wish Apple would change that.

Apple: Wish granted!

John Gruber (Mastodon):

I have a bad feeling about this.

Marco Arment:

App Store search is ineffective and primitive, and doesn’t reliably show high-quality, relevant results for queries.

How can it be improved?

More advanced search algorithms, like the last two decades? Nope!

AI-assisted relevance and ranking, like this decade? Nope!

When all you have is an insatiable desire for more “services revenue”, you can only see one solution…

Greg Pierce:

Why should Apple just take 30% of the lifetime value of your customers in perpetuity when they can charge you 90% of that just to acquire them!

Jeff Johnson:

Do additional ad positions in App Store search mean that if someone searches for your app by name, Apple can bury your app even lower than its current (hopefully) #2 position in the results?

Previously:

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