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“Apps intended for kids may not include third-party advertising or analytics”

developer.apple.com

121–130 of 398 posts

Re: “Apps intended for kids may not include third-party advertising or analytics”

#121
post #27

How does this impact Google's "YouTube Kids" app. It is currently listed as the "Best video app for all kids" on iTunes. It contains more videos advertising stuff to kids than it does any other kind. With McDonalds non-affilitated but clearly still ads being the most prominent.

Well given that Google own the AdSense/DoubleClick platform which is used for serving ads on YouTube as well as all of it's own custom analytic tools none of these would be third party. The part about not linking out of the app would still apply though.

Wow, so that really reinforce the trend toward monopoly and conglomeration in tech. Make a kids entertainment platform and you must get acquired by google, facebook, Amazon or Apple before you can turn on ads.

Re: “Apps intended for kids may not include third-party advertising or analytics”

#122
post #32

This is interesting. What options does that leave for making money on these apps? Charging directly and first-party ads? Are parents willing to pay for these apps?

If parents are willing to spend money on consoles for their kids to play and for school supplies for their kids to learn, this isn’t any different, right?

Parents will pay.

Re: “Apps intended for kids may not include third-party advertising or analytics”

#123
Dropping adds seems good to me, but dropping analytics doesn't seem great from a game dev perspective. New features and game balance is often driven by analytics data. For example, if no one's using a certain feature in the game then maybe it needs more attention brought to it or maybe attention won't be focused on it for the next update.

I understand that there's a fine line between game analytics and farming PII but I think it's an important line. I'm sad to see Apple forcing you to use a first-party analytics solution. Smaller indie devs often won't have the time to set up their own data pipeline and depend on things like Unity Analytics or Flurry to help them do data analysis.

Re: “Apps intended for kids may not include third-party advertising or analytics”

#124
Working on an ad platform, this definitely makes sense.

As a company we moved away from user targeting to context targeting where app developers provide all the context. Our case is specific to transit but I think in general this invasive ad model needs to go away

Re: “Apps intended for kids may not include third-party advertising or analytics”

#125

Apple should just go all in: Disable free to play games targeted at children completely. Require every children's game to have an upfront price (I suppose the $0.99 minimum app charge at least). This would be great news for the market - game developers would focus on building more rewarding gaming experiences, instead of just endless skinner boxes. It would also help sell Apple devices, since developers would not nee…

I think your optimism is misplaced. App developers would soon figure out how to charge 99 cents for a Skinner box.

Re: “Apps intended for kids may not include third-party advertising or analytics”

#126
post #33

This is massive, Apple banned what Google does with Chromebooks for kids/schools.

Chromebooks for education don't use the information for advertising, right?

That’s what Google says.

Re: “Apps intended for kids may not include third-party advertising or analytics”

#127

So far the only kids apps I've used with my little one is 'Sesame Street' and 'PBS Kids Video'. He loves Elmo, and its very handy in the pediatrician's waiting room to have a distraction. I also run a PiHole, and to my displeasure, I've found both these apps use Google Analytics. PBS Kids Video goes a few steps further and uses Google AdWords as well as ScorecardResearch analytics. These publicly funded apps are siph…

Have you considered a write-up of the issues with the CBeebies app? The BBC is the kind of organisation that might quite easily be shamed into removing those.

Well, theoretically, they will have to remove these to remain in the AppStore with the new guidelines. I hope Apple is able to enforce it.

Re: “Apps intended for kids may not include third-party advertising or analytics”

#128
post #26

I totally agree with this! I built a game and naively added ads to it as it seemed a good way to monetize. The game started to be really liked, and had 300k+ downloads overall. Many kids started playing it also. Luckily I realized quickly that kids play on the devices of parents and so the ads they might see are at times super inappropriate! Then I removed all ads, I'd rather make less money but have people play and…

I am not familiar with the ad space, but isn't there a provider/method/framework that would allow people embedding ads on their apps/websites/platforms to select the types or categories of ads they'd be comfortable with?

Re: “Apps intended for kids may not include third-party advertising or analytics”

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered a write-up of the issues with the CBeebies app? The BBC is the kind of organisation that might quite easily be shamed into removing those.

Well, theoretically, they will have to remove these to remain in the AppStore with the new guidelines. I hope Apple is able to enforce it.

True, although I presume there's an Android version too...
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