111–120 of 126 posts
Damn. I was disappointed but not surprised to see search ads appear in the play store but now in the app store too ? App discovery feels utterly broken
This is bad for everyone except Apples revenue and already rich app-makers. First off, it's bad for the end user since app quality has nothing to do with the amount spent on advertising. It is also bad for indie developers since they won't be able to compete with big businesses. Most likely, the indie made app you love will be harder to find since other apps will be shown instead. This sucks and is a totally greedy m…
However app quality in the Apple Store is significantly higher than on Android, because of their review process
You can talk about the problems with walled gardens all day and I'd agree with the majority of what you're saying, but I gotta be honest, when you're inside the walled garden it is pretty nice that they keep the riff-raff out, in this case the riff raff being the low budget (and frequently IP infringing) crapware games.
This is bad for everyone except Apples revenue and already rich app-makers. First off, it's bad for the end user since app quality has nothing to do with the amount spent on advertising. It is also bad for indie developers since they won't be able to compete with big businesses. Most likely, the indie made app you love will be harder to find since other apps will be shown instead. This sucks and is a totally greedy m…
> It is also bad for indie developers since they won't be able to compete with big businesses. Craig Federighi and Phil Schiller address these obvious concerns in this candid post-WWDC talk: http://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2016/06/17/ep-158
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ahh yes, more fees for developers. > it's basically impossible for an unknown developer to get noticed They could improve the search algorithm to solve this. Perhaps redesign the app store UI to better accommodate new apps. Or they could stagnate for years and then solve the problem by charging developers more. I'm not a hater though.
>Perhaps redesign the app store UI to better accommodate new apps. Do you have any ideas on how to do it?
This is bad for everyone except Apples revenue and already rich app-makers. First off, it's bad for the end user since app quality has nothing to do with the amount spent on advertising. It is also bad for indie developers since they won't be able to compete with big businesses. Most likely, the indie made app you love will be harder to find since other apps will be shown instead. This sucks and is a totally greedy m…
This is bad for everyone except Apples revenue and already rich app-makers. First off, it's bad for the end user since app quality has nothing to do with the amount spent on advertising. It is also bad for indie developers since they won't be able to compete with big businesses. Most likely, the indie made app you love will be harder to find since other apps will be shown instead. This sucks and is a totally greedy m…
> It is also bad for indie developers since they won't be able to compete with big businesses. Craig Federighi and Phil Schiller address these obvious concerns in this candid post-WWDC talk: http://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2016/06/17/ep-158
Phil Schiller:
So, the two sort of priorties we set on the team as they were working on it was, if we're going to do this, we have to do it in a way that, number one, protects user privacy. There are many ways that companies do it where they're not protecting privacy and we need to understand that. And secondly, how do you do it in a way that gives advantages to small and indie developers, because it's easy to imagine a system that didn't do that.
And so, we set out to think of all the things we could do to make that possible. And there's a long list of things. And I won't go through all of them to bore you all, but there are many things.
Things like:
- First of all, there's no minimum bid. So we don't set a bar, if you have a very small amount of money, you can just do what you can with a small amount of money.
- The fact that we're going to work really hard to try to make relevance the top priority, over bid, for why something gets shown. That the users are the ultimate deciders of what gets shown, based on their clicks, they're a big input to what is relevant to the search result.
- The fact that we're going to work hard to try to police and improve the whole metadata system if we find, as it easily could be abused to hurt [small] developers.
- The fact that — and this has been a hotly-debated thing — the fact that you can do conquesting. You can use someone else's brand in your ad words that you want to use. As we thought about it, that is more likely to benefit the small developer than the big developer. Because the big developer isn't going to pick on a lot of small developer terms, but a small developer can try to latch on to a big developer's name. If I want to search for Angry Birds and your game, you can. Right? And so we think that that can help them.
- The fact that there's no exclusivity. So a large developer cannot say, "And I want to be the top bid, and I'm going to spend everything I can to buy out this term." There will be no exclusivity, there's going to be a rotation there, and as that rotation appears, the relevance will help drive it further.
We're trying everything we can, and I think one of the best things is, right now, once we're in beta throughout the summer, the downloads the users get from the ads are real downloads to benefit the developer, but we're not charging [for ads] during the beta time. So there's a chance for everybody to get in and try it out, help us learn from it, and drive real downloads and real business without any marketing spend.
So we're trying to think of things we can do, and we'll think of more. We'll take feedback and see what's happening, and where it works and doesn't work, and where it feels like they're getting stomped on, and we'll try to do all that we can to make it better.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But searching is the only way (sane) people find anything on the App Store. When was the last time you browsed the store until you found the cool new app you just read about? Whenever I use the App store, I'm on a mission. But it's also a mission to get free stuff, so maybe I'm not even part of the equation.
I agree. Whenever I download an app it's because I read or heard about it somewhere else. Open the app store, head to search, type name, tap install. I don't think I've casually browsed around the app store since I got my first iPhone (first smartphone), around 2009 or 10.
"App Transaction Data. This includes historical information about your transactions in the App Store, including apps you have downloaded and in-app purchases you've made." Yuck. https://searchads.apple.com/privacy
For many many years, the number one reason people told me why they used apple products was privacy and that with apple I'm not a product. It's how they could justify paying the high premium for apple products. It would be very interesting if they get into the advertising business. Harvesting data about my usage it and using that data to charge more for ads that are well targeted. It would mean that in addition to app…
This isn't general advertising. It's only on the App Store and is based on the keywords you enter into a search in the store. They rolled this out because it's basically impossible for an unknown developer to get noticed anymore on there. Apple haters will use any new product to criticize the company, but this seems fairly benign and fills a need among developers.
How does the unknown developer go about buying ads with unknown revenue?
This seems to me like it will give an advantage to the bigger players, and that Apple will reap most of the benefits.