Considering some recent Apple struggles with antitrust cases around App Store I want to focus today on the search. I don’t think about it much or often because we are lucky enough to live in the 3rd world country, where there are no App Store search ads, but I have US account also, for the apps that are not available in Latvia, so I’ve seen some amount.
Of course, I want to preface the story – that it is anecdotal, something I’ve noticed and I’ve heard or read that others noticed this too.
It feels like App Store search adds for no other reason, only to get money from developers. Even on Instagram, there were adds after seeing which I’ve bought something and even was happy. With App Store it feels like there is completely different stories.
There are in big part two types of ads – first, completely useless apps, rip-offs or apps the whole purpose of which is to extract more money and not providing any service. Those are the apps that are never the right answer for your search query.
Second type, is mostly big developers, who want to get the spot, so the apps from the first category won’t be at the top.
Considering this, it’s hard to see any good for the users and developers from those kind of ads. I really hope that I am wrong on this and there are small developers who were able to grow sustainable business using App Store search ads, but I’m very doubtful.