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Apple Announces More Ads Coming to App Store Starting Next Week

In a tweet, legal expert Florian Mueller argued the "You Might Also Like" ads are "another means of increasing the effective app tax rate, forcing developers to buy ads on their own app pages in order to avoid that others steer customers away from there."

Doesn’t Google do this with search ads, and doesn’t Amazon have a section on product pages showing ads for other products like the one being displayed?

Nobody is forcing anyone to buy ads — it is completely optional. Ads should level the playing field — as long as they are relevant. The consumer will benefit by being able to discover apps they may not have known about.

Product manufacturers have to pay to get into distribution. They then have to pay for shelf space at retail. And if they want an ad, for some retail, they pay for it. How could a product make it if it wasn’t promoted?

The “expert” named at the top implies that this might be bad for developers — I believe that developers have wanted this, and it will benefit the smaller developers more than the larger ones.
 
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Really falling out of love with Apple in recent years and this sort of thing does nothing to reverse their decline in my mind. Little by little Cook inexorably dilutes what once made the company feel special and exciting 🫤
 
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ProfessionalFan said:
Ads get in the way of the user experience no matter what the product is. I can understand Apple defending adding advertisements, but I can't for the life of me understand why Apple customers would defend it.
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Because it's good for Apple and for developers and I have nothing against either of them 🤷🏼‍♂️ As long as ads aren't pop-ups or holding you hostage before you can do something else, I fail to see how it negatively affects you in any significant way.

Kar98 said:
If I’m specifically looking for App XYZ and the top three results are three different apps then this does negatively affect me.
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Where does the article say that non-related apps are going to bump to the top of every search result? Even if they did, is it really that much of a burden to simply scroll down? Amazon, for example, has "sponsored" listings in most search results, and they're related to my search query. I rarely end up buying those items, but never once have I had a passing thought that those "sponsored" listings were a negative thing. It's simply no big deal to scroll down a couple inches and continue browsing the search results.
 
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ratspg said:
You’re right. But people will still buy whether they are being fooled or not. The quality of hardware and software that Apple makes is very high and it would take some major outside innovation or technology shift to hurt their bottom line. Only when there bottom line suffers will we see less ads, less adapters, and all the other things that they’ve become great at for shareholders.
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The quality of software is very low actually and it has been since almost a decade
 
ProfessionalFan said:
Ads get in the way of the user experience no matter what the product is. I can understand Apple defending adding advertisements, but I can't for the life of me understand why Apple customers would defend it.
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Because they have blind loyalty to a company and thinks of said company as their friend.
 
neuropsychguy said:
I gets ads on my $2000+ computer. They are online but they are still there even with robust router and browser level blocking.

If I spent $10,000 or $100 on a computer they’d be there too.
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That's not remotely the same thing.
 
I guess this is in an effort to save the environment like they did with removing charging bricks from new iPhones? I mean Apple is really stepping up the courage. Nice job!
 
jonblatho said:
I think you greatly overestimate how much it cost Apple to include a power adapter and headphones in the box. Sure, it adds up, but it probably still amounts to little more than a rounding error. Their profit margins on both when purchased separately are astronomical, but no one makes people buy an Apple power adapter or EarPods/AirPods, and cheaper options certainly exist from other manufacturers.

Also, if they stopped including the adapter and headphones in the box as a mid-cycle update without lowering the price, it would absolutely mean that it was a pure profit-seeking move. But they did it with the iPhone 12 release, when the iPhone 11 dropped in price by $100 and the iPhone 12 cost significantly more to produce compared to the iPhone 11, which makes the “profit seeking” argument a bit dubious. Especially given that Apple’s hardware margins have been about steady in recent years, they probably came out about even.
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That article you linked to refers specifically to the 128GB versions of the iPhone 11 and iPhone 12. It doesn’t mention Mini, Pro or Max. The launch price of the 128GB iPhone 11 in 2019 was $749. The launch price of the 128GB iPhone 12 in 2020 was $849. So the difference is $100.

The linked article states that the BOM costs went up to $415 for the iPhone 12 or 21% more than the BOM costs for the iPhone 11. So the BOM costs for the iPhone 11 were $415/1.21 or about $343. So the dollar difference in BOM costs is $72.

So the net margin, ignoring anything to do with accessories, increased by $28 dollars.
 
Kierkegaarden said:
In a tweet, legal expert Florian Mueller argued the "You Might Also Like" ads are "another means of increasing the effective app tax rate, forcing developers to buy ads on their own app pages in order to avoid that others steer customers away from there."

Doesn’t Google do this with search ads, and doesn’t Amazon have a section on product pages showing ads for other products like the one being displayed?

Nobody is forcing anyone to buy ads — it is completely optional. Ads should level the playing field — as long as they are relevant. The consumer will benefit by being able to discover apps they may not have known about.

Product manufacturers have to pay to get into distribution. They then have to pay for shelf space at retail. And if they want an ad, for some retail, they pay for it. How could a product make it if it wasn’t promoted?

The “expert” named at the top implies that this might be bad for developers — I believe that developers have wanted this, and it will benefit the smaller developers more than the larger ones.
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The issue with search ads - which applies to Apple, Google, and Amazon - is that it allows competitors to bid on your product name, so when customers search for your product, they'll see a competitor's ad in the top search results slot instead of your app. So as a developer either you accept that you'll lose some of your search traffic or you have to pay to bid on your own product name.
 
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Yes please more ads. Does nobody talk about the in app ads? Atrocious. My son likes to play some games on an iPad and the ad model for games is absolutely ridiculous. Probably less ads on torrent and porn sites than games apple targeting at kids. I also appreciate the violent game ads on coloring games. Keep it up apple this parent going to take away the iPad and make kid use a desktop like the old apple ][e days.
 
bellis1 said:
Yes please more ads. Does nobody talk about the in app ads? Atrocious. My son likes to play some games on an iPad and the ad model for games is absolutely ridiculous. Probably less ads on torrent and porn sites than games apple targeting at kids. I also appreciate the violent game ads on coloring games. Keep it up apple this parent going to take away the iPad and make kid use a desktop like the old apple ][e days.
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Apple Arcade is great for this reason. Mobile gaming with zero ads or in-game purchases.
 
It’s a great thing because people love ads. I’m glad Apple is becoming more like Android and Windows. And at the same time they will try to tell you that they don’t sell your data to 3rd partys.
 
ProfessionalFan said:
Some Apple customers are masochists, I am convinced.

No more cable and/or charger in the box but price stays the same? Fine with them! In fact, they'll defend Apple for the decision to the death even.

Adding advertisements where editorial content used to be? Fine with them! In fact, they'll defend Apple for the decision to the death even.
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Not masochists, but realists, being an adult and understanding that Apple is not immune to inflation and needs to provide its employees with yearly raises and pay more for their employee benefits which increase in cost every year.

In order to handle that, Apple can either raise prices, or remove a cable or charger (that 99% of their customers already have - I have a box full).

Either way, many on forums will still feel obligated to engage in a juvenile nonlinear public whine-fest of epic proportions to let everyone know how put out they are.

Don't like Apple's decisions and actions? Simply step-up and purchase a competitor's products and find happiness. Easy.
 
Doesn’t it work both ways? If you’re a small developer building a new app, couldn’t you place ads for your app on the page of the larger competitor’s app?
 
neuropsychguy said:
I gets ads on my $2000+ computer. They are online but they are still there even with robust router and browser level blocking.

If I spent $10,000 or $100 on a computer they’d be there too.
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I don't see any ads on my Mac, iPad and iPhone. Use AdGuard for Safari or Ublock Origin.

For mobile platforms, you need the paid version of AdGuard to block in-app ads. It will not block first-party ads in apps if the content servers and the ad servers are the same, unless you sideload the app.
 
Tbh this doesn't really bother me all that much. I don't go to the App Store (other than for app updates) as much as I used to so an ad here or there seems ok.

However, what does bother me is that we've arrived at the point where we're paying for and seeing ads in places where we shouldn't - Apple Music, TV+

If there's a free tier then by all means, show ads.

However, if I am paying for Apple Music, TV+, then you have no right or business showing me ads. That's not what I'm paying for.
 
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