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AppGratis Is Nothing More Than A Black Hat Marketing Company

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Re: AppGratis Is Nothing More Than A Black Hat Marketing Company

#71

Post by rossjudson »

Irregardless wrote: post #25

This story isn't adding up so far. > But sources close to [Apple] say it was more than a little troubled that AppGratis was pushing a business model that appeared to favor developers with the financial means to pay for exposure. http://allthingsd.com/20130408/confirmed-apple-kicks-appgrat... That's the closest thing I can find to a "confirmation" that AppGratis was accepting cash in exchange for a higher rank in thei…

Sounds like AppGratis showed apps in a way that was completely different from the App Store. The App Store provides an immense pile of crap, which is in front of another immense pile of crap, and...repeat. You get the idea.

AppGratis shows a small number of apps each day and says here -- look at these -- I think they are good.

Some subset gets there because the developer pays, but my impression is that most do not.

Users wouldn't keep looking at AppGratis if everything was crap. There's a balance to be had.

On 5.6 -- if AppGratis sends ONE notification each day that says "new things to look at", is that advertising, promotion, or direct marketing? How is that different from any other news item push?

I think Apple was disturbed by the effect AppGratis could have on their charting system.

Re: AppGratis Is Nothing More Than A Black Hat Marketing Company

#73

Post by danielrhodes »

Irregardless wrote: post #25

This story isn't adding up so far. > But sources close to [Apple] say it was more than a little troubled that AppGratis was pushing a business model that appeared to favor developers with the financial means to pay for exposure. http://allthingsd.com/20130408/confirmed-apple-kicks-appgrat... That's the closest thing I can find to a "confirmation" that AppGratis was accepting cash in exchange for a higher rank in thei…

> That's the closest thing I can find to a "confirmation" that AppGratis was accepting cash in exchange for a higher rank in their app.

AppGratis is doing a CPI (cost-per-install) business. They make an arrangement with developers where they reduce the price of their app to 0 for a day and in return AppGratis will deliver a certain number of installs for an agreed-upon price.

App developers like this because it is a form of promotion for their app, it increases their chart ranking, and the next day they put the price back on their app and continue to get lots of installs via an increased ranking. There are also numerous opportunities to monetize those free users from in-app payments.

This whole thing differs from normal advertising in that apps like AppGratis drive a ton of installs in a very short amount of time. TapJoy ran afoul of Apple awhile back for similar types of practices.

Re: AppGratis Is Nothing More Than A Black Hat Marketing Company

#74

Post by calbear81 »

jruderman wrote: post #68
calbear81 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some games benefit from push notifications as reminders to do something like "feed my dragon or else it will die" or "your free spins are available now". These are integral to the core mechanics of the gameplay vs. a marketing message like "buy some coins for $1.99, on sale now!" or something to that effect.

Waiting by not playing a game is never a "core mechanic" of a game. It's either an excuse for the app to grab your attention (play now to get a bonus) or a way to drive IAP (pay so you don't have to wait).

I'm thinking of something like a Tamogotchi where you need to take action at specified intervals and push notifications would seem like something I would like as a reminder.

Re: AppGratis Is Nothing More Than A Black Hat Marketing Company

#75

Post by ceejayoz »

untog wrote: post #64
WiseWeasel wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just wondering why you would allow a game to send notifications in the first place; you were given the choice on first run.

To use one Zynga game as an example, it's great to get notifications from Words With Friends when it's my turn to play. The "you haven't played with ! Start a game?" notifications, not so much.

Basically, Apple needs a "this notification is spam" reporter.

Re: AppGratis Is Nothing More Than A Black Hat Marketing Company

#76

Post by jfim »

danielweber wrote: post #16
nugget wrote: post #3

Well said. An ecosystem where paid promotion is the only path to reach the top of the charts incentivizes (even requires) the developers to become as aggressive as possible in terms of monetization, which often sucks for users and user experience.

Well, the problem is that reaching the top of the charts matters, because being at the top of the charts is where sales come from. If there were something about the app market that really led itself to a winner-take-all tournament-style compensation, then I could shrug and think that AppGratis is merely the manifestation of another problem, and if it weren't them it would be someone else. I'm not sure the app market…

I am not exactly familiar with how the Apple App Store is structured, but I know Google Play has sections for top new apps[1], which is restricted to only recent apps.

It still doesn't solve the problem of launching an app and having no one download it, but at least it means that they're not competing against entrenched apps with millions of installs.

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/collection/topselling_new...

Re: AppGratis Is Nothing More Than A Black Hat Marketing Company

#77

Post by 2pasc »

windsurfer wrote: post #11
alxbrun wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"AppGratis simply served a need, both on the consumer side (App discovery) [...]" How can you call "discovery" a process where users receive everyday a push for the app that paid the highest bid to AppGratis ?

How can you twist words like that? You get paid by a marketing company to steer discussions on social networks in favour of your brand.

This is plain bullying. Most promoted apps did not pay AppGratis advertising to be in the app. Some did, and they were described as "Sponsored". How do you describe Google Business model then?

Re: AppGratis Is Nothing More Than A Black Hat Marketing Company

#78

Post by dools »

AJ007 wrote: post #37
Irregardless wrote: post #25

This story isn't adding up so far. > But sources close to [Apple] say it was more than a little troubled that AppGratis was pushing a business model that appeared to favor developers with the financial means to pay for exposure. http://allthingsd.com/20130408/confirmed-apple-kicks-appgrat... That's the closest thing I can find to a "confirmation" that AppGratis was accepting cash in exchange for a higher rank in thei…

One of my friends in the mobile space told me about some app doing this, but I don't know if AppGratis. At least one mobile app was offering a free app of the day and charging thousands of dollars for the placement. Not my strong area, but I will point out that the rest of the blogger's post is fantasy . If you are correct, then nothing he wrote is right. - Paid links is not blackhat SEO. Blackhat SEO involves buildi…

Couple of points:

Paid links are black hat SEO. If you sell links you should be putting rel="nofollow" on them.

Also Google does do a pretty rigorous job of combatting paid ad spam. They have many ad text and landing page policies designed to weed out sneaky affiliate deals and the like. They also reward advertisers that provide more popular user experiences through their quality score mechanism which is a direct (and very significant) factor in cost per click.

It could be AppGratis was just as rigorous in their evaluation of offers - I also don't think its a very valid analogy nor do I disagree with you generally save for those 2 points.

Re: AppGratis Is Nothing More Than A Black Hat Marketing Company

#79

Post by jrockway »

It would probably be more ethical to charge users for installing AppGratis. Then the incentive would be to provide the user with useful information everyday, or risk being uninstalled / canceled / refunded / whatever. Consumer Reports works this way and they seem to be pretty successful.

Re: AppGratis Is Nothing More Than A Black Hat Marketing Company

#80

Post by unreal37 »

nugget wrote: post #3

Well said. An ecosystem where paid promotion is the only path to reach the top of the charts incentivizes (even requires) the developers to become as aggressive as possible in terms of monetization, which often sucks for users and user experience.

How about a movie? Is advertising the only way to reach the top of the charts?

(The answer is yes. Box office hits need to be advertised to be box office hits.)

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