Apple buying Google ads for high-value subscription apps • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple buying Google ads for high-value subscription apps

#171

Post by darkwizard42 » Mon, Nov 15, 2021, 3:11 AM UTC

webmobdev wrote: post #161

ev1 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an iOS user, I do not want the publisher knowing anything about me. I'm happy to pay for the app, but I do not want to tell the publisher a single thing other than the fact that it is paid. Nothing else. I do not want to share my email, I do not want to share any form of cardholder data. I want to cancel in one tap for any subscription. I do not want to go through shitty, abusive retention flows.

It is quite sad that most Americans see Apple's exploitation of a lacunae in their law (not allowing easy cancellation of subscriptions) as some benevolent act from it. Two questions: 1. Are you fine (edit) as a consumer (/edit) paying 30% more for this, especially when you are just trading data collection from the App maker to Apple? 2. Wouldn't you rather that everyone had this protection, and not depend on the mer…

Regarding #1, no one is stopping any app developer from charging 30% more than what they currently do and seeing if consumers will stay with them. Apple already has my data... they have time and time again proven to be reasonable stewards of that data. I do not want to play a guessing game with 40 other developers to see if they all follow that. I've been burned too many times.

Regarding #2, we didn't depend on the mercy of corporates in the PC world. I saw firsthand how annoying it is to debug my parent's computer repeatedly when random apps get installed or terms of service overstep. For less tech aware consumers this is almost certainly a win in terms of privacy and general experience.

Re: Apple buying Google ads for high-value subscription apps

#172

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Nov 15, 2021, 3:13 AM UTC

madeofpalk wrote: post #164

asimilator wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple doesn’t allow subscriptions priced at less than $0.99. Why not? What if I had a product that i wanted to sell for $0.50 a month? I’d pay $0.50 more. I just had the unpleasant experience of canceling a non-Apple controlled service. It sucked. Pages and pages of “are you sure you want to cancel” dark patterns. You guys did this to yourselves with absolutely shitty customer experience. Could not care less if App…

I’m all in favour, as a user, for Apple IAP subscriptions. But shouldn’t “the market” be able to send a signal that they prefer that? Shouldn’t Apple’s IAP actually be able to compete on its merits (like the better experience that we both prefer!) rather than arbitrary platform lock-in? If, faced with actual competition, users and/or developers do not chose Apple IAP, wouldn’t this signal to Apple that they need to d…

[deleted]

Re: Apple buying Google ads for high-value subscription apps

#173

Post by djbusby » Mon, Nov 15, 2021, 3:19 AM UTC

asimilator wrote: post #158

offtotheraces wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mobile app operator here - let me clarify some things: 1. Until June it was impossible for a developer to issue a refund to an angry customer - Apple simply did not allow developers to do that, despite the app store being around for 13 years. This has led to untold frustration among developers - angry customers email us, leave horrible reviews, leave screeds on social media about how we “won’t” refund them, when in a…

> Apple doesn’t allow subscriptions priced at less than $0.99. Why not? What if I had a product that i wanted to sell for $0.50 a month? I’d pay $0.50 more. I just had the unpleasant experience of canceling a non-Apple controlled service. It sucked. Pages and pages of “are you sure you want to cancel” dark patterns. You guys did this to yourselves with absolutely shitty customer experience. Could not care less if App…

Right, or there's me, with no dark patterns, easy cancellation (one email, we answer our phone) on a $1000/mo subscription app. And the hoops to get into apple, and they wanted a cut, even when users create an account and engage from our plain web-app ages before trying for iOS app. It took almost a year to get approved with Mostly our terms, apple forced a bunch of changes - which frustrated our users (who just went back to the web-app). For us, Apple was a zero-value time-suck, degraded user experience, and since we're not assholes, the IAP benefits were moot for our clients.

App store is classic rent-seeking; it's also an economic force. So, we've pulled our app, but I'm long $AAPL

Re: Apple buying Google ads for high-value subscription apps

#174

Post by 8note » Mon, Nov 15, 2021, 3:20 AM UTC

madeofpalk wrote: post #164

asimilator wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple doesn’t allow subscriptions priced at less than $0.99. Why not? What if I had a product that i wanted to sell for $0.50 a month? I’d pay $0.50 more. I just had the unpleasant experience of canceling a non-Apple controlled service. It sucked. Pages and pages of “are you sure you want to cancel” dark patterns. You guys did this to yourselves with absolutely shitty customer experience. Could not care less if App…

I’m all in favour, as a user, for Apple IAP subscriptions. But shouldn’t “the market” be able to send a signal that they prefer that? Shouldn’t Apple’s IAP actually be able to compete on its merits (like the better experience that we both prefer!) rather than arbitrary platform lock-in? If, faced with actual competition, users and/or developers do not chose Apple IAP, wouldn’t this signal to Apple that they need to d…

Even further than that, users should be able to set their own police's for how much they want to pay for things and when.

Remove the centralization of apple driving the policy, then again to get rid of the centralization of developers choosing

Re: Apple buying Google ads for high-value subscription apps

#175

Post by donmcronald » Mon, Nov 15, 2021, 3:26 AM UTC

Terretta wrote: post #127

> When people buy access to a service via a subscription in an iOS app, they are essentially Apple’s customers. For privacy reasons Apple does not provide much information about them to the apps or businesses that run the apps. That means it’s hard to do customer service, address issues, or solve any problems. > “The user experience is much worse,” a marketing executive from one company told me. “When you buy with th…

IMO businesses selling apps have dug their own grave in the customer relationship department. In the last 20 years I've only had 2 or 3 tech support experiences where someone helped me solve a problem I'd consider non-trivial.

Businesses have cost cut and devalued support so much that it's not worth having a relationship with them. They only want a sales relationship and you're on your own when it comes to support.

What does having a relationship with them get me as a customer?

Re: Apple buying Google ads for high-value subscription apps

#176

Post by chrischen » Mon, Nov 15, 2021, 3:28 AM UTC

asimilator wrote: post #158

offtotheraces wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mobile app operator here - let me clarify some things: 1. Until June it was impossible for a developer to issue a refund to an angry customer - Apple simply did not allow developers to do that, despite the app store being around for 13 years. This has led to untold frustration among developers - angry customers email us, leave horrible reviews, leave screeds on social media about how we “won’t” refund them, when in a…

> Apple doesn’t allow subscriptions priced at less than $0.99. Why not? What if I had a product that i wanted to sell for $0.50 a month? I’d pay $0.50 more. I just had the unpleasant experience of canceling a non-Apple controlled service. It sucked. Pages and pages of “are you sure you want to cancel” dark patterns. You guys did this to yourselves with absolutely shitty customer experience. Could not care less if App…

There’s already a solution to dark patterns: chargebacks. Apple probably makes it worse by taking this avenue away because if you try to chargeback apple they probably just suspend your account.

Re: Apple buying Google ads for high-value subscription apps

#177

Post by ev1 » Mon, Nov 15, 2021, 3:29 AM UTC

ev1 wrote: post #170

webmobdev wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is quite sad that most Americans see Apple's exploitation of a lacunae in their law (not allowing easy cancellation of subscriptions) as some benevolent act from it. Two questions: 1. Are you fine (edit) as a consumer (/edit) paying 30% more for this, especially when you are just trading data collection from the App maker to Apple? 2. Wouldn't you rather that everyone had this protection, and not depend on the mer…

I'm fine paying another relatively neutral party provided they do not pass ANYTHING on to the final publisher. No name, email, country, anything. Too many bad experiences. If the alternative was to subscribe with Stripe or Braintree, I would just not subscribe. Sure, I might trust Stripe, but I do not trust the end-company to be reasonable or safe stewards of the data that can be exported. Time and time again, repeat…

As an additional note: I would love to see such a privacy-respecting third party exist. Ideally, they would collect nothing at all and exist via prepaid value.

Several years ago there was a company similar to this called UltimateGameCard - they were a neutral third party not associated with any publisher that strictly handled paid-in-store prepaid value PINs that collected no personal information and were partnered with dozens to hundreds of game publishers, and supported hundreds of different major games (and several software publishers).

They were available in almost every store, and using them required no privacy violations. Explicitly, their largest customer base were minors (like me at the time), and not collecting PII or even name made it great and a first choice for them.

The low incidence of fraud and inability to chargeback the company (cash only in hand; and you could still dispute the game publisher via the prepaid company to get value added back) resulted in extremely low fees, to the point where games would give you bonus value if you chose this instead of a credit card or other. They had contracts with basically every major publisher - Club Penguin, Runescape, Everquest, etc, and your funds were good almost every game you'd play.

They generally respected both sides of the market: you, a 12 year old, could ask customer service if you were genuinely ripped off or accidentally claimed too much value at a specific publisher but didn't use it yet, and they would treat you like an adult. The game publisher could refund the value if you didn't spend it yet, and not be hit with any form of chargeback or dispute fee or any increase in fees at all. And since it was paid in cash, if you were lying about it or just upset you failed your loot box gamble, you got nothing back. It was also more or less publisher contract based so random IAP trash couldn't just sign up and take money - all the big names were on this.

I would love a system like this again.

Re: Apple buying Google ads for high-value subscription apps

#178

Post by wayoutthere » Mon, Nov 15, 2021, 3:35 AM UTC

chrischen wrote: post #176

asimilator wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple doesn’t allow subscriptions priced at less than $0.99. Why not? What if I had a product that i wanted to sell for $0.50 a month? I’d pay $0.50 more. I just had the unpleasant experience of canceling a non-Apple controlled service. It sucked. Pages and pages of “are you sure you want to cancel” dark patterns. You guys did this to yourselves with absolutely shitty customer experience. Could not care less if App…

There’s already a solution to dark patterns: chargebacks. Apple probably makes it worse by taking this avenue away because if you try to chargeback apple they probably just suspend your account.

Chargebacks are no panacea for dark patterns; issue too many and you’ll start getting your card blacklisted from payment processors. I did this a couple times with an online retail store that was especially egregious on the dark patterns (sneaking things into your cart on checkout, etc) and my card would get rejected at certain gas pumps and online stores for the next 6 months. It wasn’t all of them, but a good 25% simply wouldn’t take that card.

Re: Apple buying Google ads for high-value subscription apps

#179

Post by Talanes » Mon, Nov 15, 2021, 3:52 AM UTC

offtotheraces wrote: post #151

ev1 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an iOS user, I do not want the publisher knowing anything about me. I'm happy to pay for the app, but I do not want to tell the publisher a single thing other than the fact that it is paid. Nothing else. I do not want to share my email, I do not want to share any form of cardholder data. I want to cancel in one tap for any subscription. I do not want to go through shitty, abusive retention flows.

Until last year it took 11 taps to cancel through iOS. Bet it’s a whole lot less if you try to cancel HBO from their website.

I value the thought I have to put into figuring out what to click more than I do the actual effort of clicking.

Also, those numbers aren't as great if you count typing a url in your tap count.

Re: Apple buying Google ads for high-value subscription apps

#180

Post by dwaite » Mon, Nov 15, 2021, 3:59 AM UTC

TheJoeMan wrote: post #59

rkk3 wrote: post #48

Ruthless move by Apple - but brands like HBO should just take Netflix's queue and not allow in-app purchases. I was actually surprised to learn some of the app native brands mentioned (Tinder, Bumble) even had a way to sign-up for a subscription outside of the app. Seems like they would actually benefit from apple placing adds.

Which is why I see this will be a non-issue if on Dec 9th the anti-steering goes away. Then Apple places ad->user downloads->app says “hey it’s cheaper on tinder’s website”->user decides for themselves

That is making the assumption that steering means the developer doesn't have to pay a commission.

There was nothing in the court ruling preventing Apple from amending their developer contracts to put such a condition on steering for non-reader apps.