App Store Ads Gone Wild
daringfireball.net
daringfireball.net
Now that Facebook has decided to shoot itself in foot by going all in on the metaverse (the new narrative), a lot of Apple’s more self-interested decisions are starting to come to light. What started off as Apple’s commitment to privacy is now getting laid bare as pushing out and replacing their competition.
Or, more simply, ads have migrated out of the Facebook family of apps and into your OS. I can’t say this is an improvement.
Shocking to me, even before this recent change was how often (always?) the top search result was an ad in the App Store - even if I specifically spelled out the exact app I wanted.
Because of the sewer the App Store has become, I don’t even go there anymore. Does anyone?
Edit: just searched “perfboard”, an app of mine from years back. Only two results, Perfboard and Peleton: Fitness. Guess which was first?
> even before this recent change was how often (always?) the top search result was an ad in the App Store - even if I specifically spelled out the exact
Ads have simply ruined search on the App Store. It is a terrible and, dare I say, -un-Apple-like, user experience.
people like to argue with me about that.
the problem described in this article is a perfect example of what I mean.
Apple can A) take money for gambling ads, and place those ads at the expense of losing trust sometime afterwards, or B) not take that money, costing some short-term gain and leaving the long-term stuff like brand integrity and trustworthiness untouched.
it is always wiser and more difficult to do B. sometimes it is a little more difficult, sometimes it is a lot more difficult, but it is always, always, always the wrong move to make a decision based on revenue generation and/or expense minimization potential alone.
the long-term stuff is real, and it exists now. you can't use it as a resource today, but you can make decisions today which change its size and shape dramatically. the more you optimize for revenue generation today, the smaller your long-term resources become.
Is this actually true? I know that a lot of people assume it's true, they want to believe it's true, but I'm not sure the empirical evidence supports it.
when you earn money today, it comes from somewhere. if you optimize for money acquisition rate, you start pulling from not only different places, but different times.
If I say "screw it" and impulsively buy a new sports car today, I won't have money to buy the much better car I want next year. Today's itch is scratched, and I can report to my family that we have a new car. (I have optimized for the short term.)
Later, I can sell the car I bought today, but I won't get what I paid, and because of that, I can't get the car I had planned on getting, which is not only a much better value, but is perfect for my family and its needs. I take from my bank account in the future to get what I want today. Said another way, I have less in my bank account in a year because I jumped the gun today.
This is what I mean when I say that optimizing for today borrows from the future. Your resources in the future are more limited because you optimized for the short term when you made an important decision. Optimizing for the short term pulls those rewards you are getting from somewhere, and unless you are stealing, you're pull those rewards from your future self.
Optimizing for the longer term can indeed also reward in the short term, and I'm not talking about anything like that. I'm talking about making decisions where your only decision criteria is what you want right now. This is, to me, what Apple's now-suspended decision to allow gambling advertisements REEKED of. It just stank of "we could have more money right now and improve our quarterly numbers if we let people do this" and is classic business optimization of the short-term.
Apple has become so big and powerful, consumers don't have much of a choice. The mobile OS market is a duopoly, with Apple one of the duopolists. What are Apple customers going to do, switch to Android? Google is almost 100% an advertising company, so the grass is not greener on the other side.
There seems to be a vague hope that someday this will come back to bite Apple, but that's all it is now, a hope. Meanwhile, Apple is still bringing in record revenues.
how foolish of me.
I suppose that's OK, since it opens up opportunities for other companies.
Sure, there might be some effects where a few users are turned off and leave the platform, but the loss of those users is likely outweighed by the gains from advertising, probably by a lot. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have A/B tested that to the extent that they can.
You are welcome to hate it but that’s the calculation they and everyone else who serves ads has made.
Schiller was the last person that had Steve’s sensibilities.
Ads are certainly profitable - the cost is damage to the user experience.
Historically Apple has prioritized user experience, which is probably why many Apple users (Gruber et al.) hate this.