App Store Ads Gone Wild
John Gruber (tweet):
But how much money can these ads be generating? How much can Apple hope they eventually generate? It can’t possibly be enough money to justify the damage it’s doing to Apple’s brand.
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“No ads in the App Store, period” would have been a powerful, appealing message. One that Apple could have used to justify its control over all software on the platform and its much-debated mandatory cut of all app and game transactions. “We sell ads in the App Store, but they’re OK because they don’t track you” seems to be the message Apple is going for, but that’s neither powerful nor appealing. It boils down to “Hey, it could be worse.”
“OK because they don’t track you” accepts Apple’s self-defined esoteric definition of “track” as standard language.
I’m certain that’s not true.
I propose that “only we can track you” is technically correct and standard definitions.
But there are aspects of Apple’s position on advertising eight years ago, unrelated to privacy, that don’t square with Apple’s position today. Cook has repeated variations of that “you’re not the customer, you’re the product” mantra umpteen times since 2014. But how are these ads in the App Store not making users the product, and advertisers the customers?
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Apple’s business model is no longer the straightforward selling of great products, and these new ads in the App Store are not designed to make anything better other than Apple’s Services bottom line.
What happened shouldn’t surprise anyone who has even a passing familaritly with auction based ad models on the web. Of course these were the ads that would dominate the App Store.
Which, realistically, means Apple wasn’t surprised. Which means it knew what it was doing and ploughed on anyway.
Federico Viticci returns to the show to talk about iPads, Stage Manager, and Apple’s ill-considered foray into expanding ads in the App Store.
Previously:
- Gambling Ads on App Store Product Pages
- App Store Ads in Today and App Pages
- Does Apple News Track You?
- Google vs. iOS App Privacy Labels
Update (2022-11-09): Basic Apple Guy:
Fast forward to 2022, and I feel like the wool has been pulled over my eyes. Apple has slowly expanded the reach of ads across their platforms over the past several years, including now showing ads before their TV+ shows, allowing ads to be absolutely riddled throughout the News+ app (including videos), showing ads in the stocks app, promoting their services in the iOS settings app, not reprimanding third-party developers from using push notifications to display ads, showing ads in App Store search results, and most recently, showing ads on the front page and EVERY SINGLE app product page of the App Store. What’s more, there are rumours of more ads rolling out into Maps and Podcasts in the future.
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What angers me about this trend is that many of the experiences I treasure are being devalued in order to prioritize more revenue.
2 Comments RSS · Twitter
Its funny all these people who have been following Apple for years if not decades. Still dont understand Apple.
Maybe Apple are getting ready to cover the "cost" of lowering their tax. This is the fault of all stingy app developers who don't want to pitch in.
