[staticelf]

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 move from one of the largest corporations in the world.

[Kiro]

As an indie game developer I disagree with you. Spending money on ads promoting my game is the only way I've managed to get any traction. I don't need to spend big money either. You need advertising or having a big network that can promote your game for free. Simply making a good game doesn't cut it unless you're lucky.

[johnydepp]

I tend to disagree with you. First off it will decrease app disconverability. Second, many of indie developers depend on the incode from in-app advertisement. Now, after the release of AppStore Ads, the money will go directly to Apple instead of small Indie developers.

[Razengan]

> 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

[mpetrovich]

TL;DR

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.

[staticelf]

Can you TLDR it for us?

[Razengan]

Not a TLDR but from the transcript [1] under "On App Store search ads":

...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.

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.

[1] http://www.imore.com/our-full-transcript-talk-show-wwdc-2016...

[blowski]

My instinct is to agree. Instead of making the App Store better so that it's easier for users to find the right app at the right time, this will make the interface even more cluttered. As a result, I will spend more time searching for apps on Google.

If advertising was their main revenue stream, I'd understand it. But it's not, and it's hard to ever imagine it being so. Apple have already pulled away from mobile advertising, so this looks more like a revenue-grab than a long-term strategic move.

[thomasthomas]

this "greedy" perspective is growing more prevalent and tiresome on HN. i would speculate increase is due to increase in younger users not in the real world and international users with different perspective on economics/competition.i'm sure this will get downvoted

[staticelf]

Well, I am seldom the first one to shout greedy but in this case they really could focus on creating a better appstore experience for free but did not.

They already own the app distribution on iOS completely and is already making huge amounts of money (I would guess) on that 30% cut. Do they really need to make the extra money that comes of this?

Sure, it will make their revenue go up even more but at the expense of users and smaller developers. That is what I believe, but if that really is what is going to happen I guess we will find out.

[thomasthomas]

eh app store is really feast or famine for businesses. zero middle ground. could help smaller guys. theres a whole niche industry where smaller biz's pay money to get promotion from 'social influencers' to boost downloads. apple just improving this work-around solution.

[raverbashing]

However app quality in the Apple Store is significantly higher than on Android, because of their review process

[FussyZeus]

Not sure why this is downvoted, granted it's not just because of the review process but app (and especially game) quality is night and day between Android and iOS, both because of the review process and because of the barriers to entry being decently higher for iOS.

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.

[mhaymo]

> app quality has nothing to do with the amount spent on advertising

Is that really true though? If I have a bad app that nobody wants and I'm not planning on improving, spending money advertising it would be a waste. The only people who spend money advertising are those that think they can convert those impressions to money, usually by providing value to customers.

[blowski]

Which must be why nobody pays to advertise rubbish sites, right? Oh hang on. Arbitrage.