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A New Way to Promote Your App on Google Play

android-developers.blogspot.com

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Re: A New Way to Promote Your App on Google Play

#31

Post by raphael_l »

speeder wrote: post #20
username223 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't own an Android phone, but I'm surprised that Google Play has lousy search. I expect the Apple App Store to have useless search, because Apple isn't a search company, but I'd figure Google had that part solved. This sounds like at least perverse incentives, and possibly a plain old shake-down: making their search worse, and/or burying specific results, directly makes them money. It reminds me of the bad old da…

I make apps for Android and iOS, and made my first release 2 or 3 years ago (don't remember the precise date). Back then, iOS search was purely utter crap, finding totally unrelated things (including notoriously if you searched google maps, you would not find it... apple hardcoded the search for google maps to return google maps after all the internet poking fun at them). And Android search was awesome, some keyword…

Do you have a source for the "Appstore Google Maps" debacle? I haven't heard that one before even though I owned a iPhone two/three years ago, and it seems very interesting!

Re: A New Way to Promote Your App on Google Play

#32

Post by ncza »

OMGBrewmaster wrote: post #29

Allowing developers to pay for promoted placement is a terrible idea for Google Play's users, for app developers and for Google. Google Play users will now see more exploitative apps that are visible in search results not because they have earned high ratings from users or have a low uninstall rate, but because they are able to extract more money from each user to pay for their placement. App developers with quality…

Google's core strength was search but in recent years I felt it got worse and worse for the benefit of Google's other strength: Advertising.

Re: A New Way to Promote Your App on Google Play

#34

Post by mss6989 »

Someone1234 wrote: post #13

While I don't care either way if this exists or not, I do worry that this will further result in Google ignoring the "discoverability" problem in the Google Play app store. Because if they improve discoverability for free, then who will buy their adverts? The worse the store is at pointing you at the correct apps, the more ads people will buy (so less work for them and more $$$, win/win). It isn't helped by how large…

For the consumer, discoverability isn't a problem. The download numbers are through the roof, and continue to grow year over year.

For the publisher/developer, discoverability is a challenge. There are certainly steps that you can take to improve your app store presence (keywords in titles, on point descriptions, etc.). So much of the app marketplace depends on word-of-mouth marketing. Build a good app, and people will find you...regardless of how app store search works.

Re: A New Way to Promote Your App on Google Play

#35

Post by chaqke »

A New Way for Google to accept your money in an auction for placement slots (that displace actual search positions).

Obviously a winning move for google, but not really a win for anybody else (besides people trying to arbitrage ads for these new, search-result-displacing slots).

Re: A New Way to Promote Your App on Google Play

#36

Post by dismal2 »

ncza wrote: post #32
OMGBrewmaster wrote: post #29

Allowing developers to pay for promoted placement is a terrible idea for Google Play's users, for app developers and for Google. Google Play users will now see more exploitative apps that are visible in search results not because they have earned high ratings from users or have a low uninstall rate, but because they are able to extract more money from each user to pay for their placement. App developers with quality…

Google's core strength was search but in recent years I felt it got worse and worse for the benefit of Google's other strength: Advertising.

actually, its always been about advertising!

Re: A New Way to Promote Your App on Google Play

#37

Post by bduerst »

Iftheshoefits wrote: post #21
krschultz wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Engineers love to hate it, but sales & marketing matters. It works. Making a product, throwing it up on the web and walking away doesn't work. I'm not going to argue that point, it's a fact. For more on that, read Peter Theil's 0 to 1, or anything by patio11, or listen to the podcast Startups for the Rest of Us, or any one of a dozen other sources from people that have made money in the space. If you agree with that,…

You are assuming that price and value are positively correlated. They aren't necessarily. Anecdotally I find price has little to do with value in the App marketplace. Buying users, which is in fact what sales and marketing is for indirectly does not mean the marketed product is provides more value nor does it mean the app, in this case, is performing better. All it means is the marketed product has backers willing to…

>Anecdotally I find price has little to do with value in the App marketplace.

I think this is what they're getting at, or at least what took from it: Valuable apps are incorrectly priced.

I'm being a devils advocate by saying this, but the paid promotion could actually force apps to start charging relative to their value, rather than everyone charging at a flat $0.99. This would put pressure on and help sort out apps that are not very valuable, while giving valuable apps a mechanism to rise to the top.

Of course, this all breaks with apps that monetize through in-app purchases, and I honestly believe there needs to be a seperate marketplace for those Skinner boxes.

Re: A New Way to Promote Your App on Google Play

#38

Post by nothrabannosir »

krschultz wrote: post #15
nothrabannosir wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have a degree in economics and I never tried my hand at advertising, so please forgive my ignorance. To my uneducated ears, what you just said sounds like: "Advertisements are a good thing because they help surface the products that are making money (which is in some way a proxy for providing value, usually) faster than the products that are simply most popular." If I think of any advertisement I see, ever, t…

Engineers love to hate it, but sales & marketing matters. It works. Making a product, throwing it up on the web and walking away doesn't work. I'm not going to argue that point, it's a fact. For more on that, read Peter Theil's 0 to 1, or anything by patio11, or listen to the podcast Startups for the Rest of Us, or any one of a dozen other sources from people that have made money in the space. If you agree with that,…

Or the opposite: the amount of money a company makes per customer is inversely related to the marginal cost per product. Which, usually, negatively impacts product quality.

Another thing that influences that is economics of scale, and I fear that is what is more relevant, in this case: big players will drown out the small ones.

KFC is as expensive as a little mom & pop shop around the corner, but the quality is lower, yet the amount of advertising is higher.

I understand what you're trying to say, now, but when I look around me it does not apply. At all.

EDIT: PS: For the record: this is not about whether or not advertisement works, it's about the quality of advertised products versus non-advertised ones. Of course it works, as in, advertisement leads to more sales. But from a consumer point of view: do we end up consuming, on average, higher quality products in a world with advertising, compared to a world without?

Re: A New Way to Promote Your App on Google Play

#39

Post by Justsignedup »

OMGBrewmaster wrote: post #29

Allowing developers to pay for promoted placement is a terrible idea for Google Play's users, for app developers and for Google. Google Play users will now see more exploitative apps that are visible in search results not because they have earned high ratings from users or have a low uninstall rate, but because they are able to extract more money from each user to pay for their placement. App developers with quality…

But they argue quite well that this is good for users.

Sorry I can't stand the mental gymnastics argument they used.

Re: A New Way to Promote Your App on Google Play

#40

Post by pyamparala »

I might be missing something here but why is everybody hating on Google for this? How is this different from having sponsored results in the search results on Google? I feel this is great for a number of reasons:

1. This allows apps which are new to not just rely on something unreliable as App store optimization to get downloads. 2. This will force app developers to think about monetization more seriously and possibly even get rid of free apps culture. 3. You can get users at the point of their query. Facebook gets you passive users. For example on FB you might need to reach 100 people to find one person who has a problem solved by your app, but using this you can find the exact people looking for apps which solve the problem your app is about. 4. The argument about Zynga and King owning the sponsored are false. It is like saying Microsoft, Twitter and Facebook are going to own the search results on Google. 5. Improvement in organic search doesn't need to happen without starting sponsored results.

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