While I don't care either way if this exists or not, I do worry that this will further result in Google ignoring the "discoverability" problem in the Google Play app store.
Because if they improve discoverability for free, then who will buy their adverts? The worse the store is at pointing you at the correct apps, the more ads people will buy (so less work for them and more $$$, win/win).
It isn't helped by how large of a stranglehold Google has gained on the Android ecosystem. Amazon is the next largest, but still tiny by comparison. Piracy might outnumber Amazon frankly.
I don't own an Android phone, but I'm surprised that Google Play has lousy search. I expect the Apple App Store to have useless search, because Apple isn't a search company, but I'd figure Google had that part solved. This sounds like at least perverse incentives, and possibly a plain old shake-down: making their search worse, and/or burying specific results, directly makes them money. It reminds me of the bad old days of "portals," before someone made an unbiased, fast search engine called "Google."
I make apps for Android and iOS, and made my first release 2 or 3 years ago (don't remember the precise date).
Back then, iOS search was purely utter crap, finding totally unrelated things (including notoriously if you searched google maps, you would not find it... apple hardcoded the search for google maps to return google maps after all the internet poking fun at them).
And Android search was awesome, some keyword tweaking and we would soar in searches that were relevant to us (ie: people really looking for the sort of product we offer).
Then iOS made the first "discoverability improvement" change that pissed us off... they changed the interface so that instead of showing a list of results, it started to show more detailed results, but much less per page (back then some devices showed only 2 results per page depending on the orientation)
meaning that for us that were in position 50 in searches, we went from being on the fifth "finger slide" of the user, to be on the 200, 300... meaning our users on iOS sunk, fast.
Still, Android was our saviour then... so we stuck with Android (we still make iOS stuff ,but don't expect much from it).
Then it was google turn do do things, they started to "improve" their search, they "improved" so much, that now searching our company name (that is very unique), sometimes show competitors apps in first place instead.
Searching the exact name of our apps frequently don't work anymore either (back "then", 2 years ago, it searching for another app name of yours was a API usage example when you wanted to link from one app to another).
So... yep, both Google and Apple stealthly make discoverability worse, instead of better.
Now most of our income comes from third-party stores, not iTunes or Google Play
If you don't mind sharing which 3rd party stores do you have success with? I have tried Amazon with pretty much no success so I've assumed if they can't do it no one can.
We are in Samsung store (roughly same performacne as google play), several carrier stores (separated they are tiny, summed they are a good income), and we have some deals with some startups that are trying new app distribution methods, many of those startups also have deals with carriers, so we are in some carriers twice.
Anyway, our income right now looks like as if it came from dumbphone era: most of it coming from carriers, directly or indirectly.
Also we are in Yandex store, nothing impressive in terms of revenue, but stupid easy to get into (they purpusefully allow use of google play APIs, and upload methods, and whatnot... if you ever worked with google play, uploading to Yandex is VERY easy).
EDIT: Making things clearer on Amazon, they are REALLY the worst, sometimes months go by without even a single free download.
I remember finding your games here on HN quite some time ago, my 3 year old can now do your animated jigsaws herself and currently loves the game with the russian dolls. My email in my profile is also my Skype if you want to chat, maybe we can help each other out - all my downloads are for traditional jigsaws and an older audience, with children and grandchildren.
Similar position, 2 years in, 2% of our revenue last year came from Play and we're not even on iTunes yet.
For me it wasn't just hard before, it was also an early stage product and my first time publishing on the appstore. Revisiting the Play Store this year and making it my primary focus has been a very different story, you might find that as well with all your experience.
Do you have a source for the "Appstore Google Maps" debacle?
I haven't heard that one before even though I owned a iPhone two/three years ago, and it seems very interesting!
I am trying to find it, but more recent stuff is now swamping google instead, I found some personal blogs referencing it, but not the original posts (That had the hilarious pictures of the search results for "google maps" that didn't include google maps).
This was shortly after Google Maps official release in response to the crap mandatory Apple Maps.
almost one year later it happened again, but this time another explanation was given:
That Google Maps was updating to 2.0 and removing the old app and put a new one, and that during the update you could not find it, and also that itunes has several separate search servers and you had to wait for them to synch with each other.
That second story I just found out, while looking for the first, so I dunno how true it is.
For the consumer, discoverability isn't a problem. The download numbers are through the roof, and continue to grow year over year.
For the publisher/developer, discoverability is a challenge. There are certainly steps that you can take to improve your app store presence (keywords in titles, on point descriptions, etc.). So much of the app marketplace depends on word-of-mouth marketing. Build a good app, and people will find you...regardless of how app store search works.
Allowing developers to pay for promoted placement is a terrible idea for Google Play's users, for app developers and for Google. Google Play users will now see more exploitative apps that are visible in search results not because they have earned high ratings from users or have a low uninstall rate, but because they are able to extract more money from each user to pay for their placement. App developers with quality products -- especially those with small development studios like my own -- will be put at a further disadvantage from the likes of King.com, Supercell and Zynga, whose high ARPU can justify this sort of promotion. And while Google will initially be able to extract more cash from the app economy than the 30% it already does, by diluting the value of Google Play search results for their users and by incentivizing developers to make exploitative rather than quality products, mobile device owners will become more motivated to migrate to other app stores and possibly other platforms.
I wish that Google would concentrate on its core strength and develop a search system for apps that directs its users to what they will appreciate and enjoy rather than what will cost them the most money, and that would encourage developers to aim for quality rather than exploitation.
Indie developer A has the top search result for "crazy panda game" in google play, Developer B pays to get the top sponsored result, Developer A is forced to pay up to get the spot back.
This is a huge change. I personally am very excited about it. At the moment if you want to drive installs to a mobile app, the primary channel is Facebook. It's hard to reach customers any other way. I have worked on apps with a relatively high customer LTV, and we could afford to pay for something like this, but there was no way to do it.
Generally speaking I think it will be good for consumers in the long run as well. This will surface the apps that are making money (which is in some way a proxy for providing value, usually) faster than the apps that are simply most popular.
I don't have a degree in economics and I never tried my hand at advertising, so please forgive my ignorance. To my uneducated ears, what you just said sounds like:
"Advertisements are a good thing because they help surface the products that are making money (which is in some way a proxy for providing value, usually) faster than the products that are simply most popular."
If I think of any advertisement I see, ever, then value has absolutely nothing to do with it. Axe, Jack Daniel's, any laundry detergent, McDonald's, cars.
In fact, most advertisements themselves stopped trying to pretend to be "better". Of that list, only laundry detergents talk about how they are better than competitors. Which is still complete bollocks, of course.
Since when do ads have anything to do with the value of the product? How would that be any different for apps?
I'm not trying to be coy, I seriously don't understand what you said.
Engineers love to hate it, but sales & marketing matters. It works. Making a product, throwing it up on the web and walking away doesn't work. I'm not going to argue that point, it's a fact. For more on that, read Peter Theil's 0 to 1, or anything by patio11, or listen to the podcast Startups for the Rest of Us, or any one of a dozen other sources from people that have made money in the space.
If you agree with that, then my argument is that over the long term, the amount of money a company can spend on marketing is related to the amount of money they make per customer. If you sell a $1 product, you can not afford ads that cost $3 per conversion. If you sell a $30,000 product, you can afford pretty expensive ads. Of course n the short term this can get skewed. A company can dump money into ads in an unsustainable way, but that always seems to correct itself (see: Fab).
Given that a product is generally priced to some extent related to its value, the higher value products will have higher revenue per user, which will allow them to bid more for advertising.
That means we are more likely to see these ads bought by companies that make decent money on their apps. I'd love to see more high quality apps at the top of the listings, and I'd also love to be able to promote my (hopefully) high LTV apps at the top of the listings.
You are assuming that price and value are positively correlated. They aren't necessarily. Anecdotally I find price has little to do with value in the App marketplace.
Buying users, which is in fact what sales and marketing is for indirectly does not mean the marketed product is provides more value nor does it mean the app, in this case, is performing better. All it means is the marketed product has backers willing to spend more on marketing.
>Anecdotally I find price has little to do with value in the App marketplace.
I think this is what they're getting at, or at least what took from it: Valuable apps are incorrectly priced.
I'm being a devils advocate by saying this, but the paid promotion could actually force apps to start charging relative to their value, rather than everyone charging at a flat $0.99. This would put pressure on and help sort out apps that are not very valuable, while giving valuable apps a mechanism to rise to the top.
Of course, this all breaks with apps that monetize through in-app purchases, and I honestly believe there needs to be a seperate marketplace for those Skinner boxes.
Or the opposite: the amount of money a company makes per customer is inversely related to the marginal cost per product. Which, usually, negatively impacts product quality.
Another thing that influences that is economics of scale, and I fear that is what is more relevant, in this case: big players will drown out the small ones.
KFC is as expensive as a little mom & pop shop around the corner, but the quality is lower, yet the amount of advertising is higher.
I understand what you're trying to say, now, but when I look around me it does not apply. At all.
EDIT: PS: For the record: this is not about whether or not advertisement works, it's about the quality of advertised products versus non-advertised ones. Of course it works, as in, advertisement leads to more sales. But from a consumer point of view: do we end up consuming, on average, higher quality products in a world with advertising, compared to a world without?
I'm not quite sure how much I like this. I can see my search results getting populated with a bunch of apps that I don't want, like "Game of War". This will be interesting to see how this plays out.
I'm personally hoping they target more generic keywords like genres of game or coupon or hotels or stuff like that. I'd be very annoyed if they let advertisers target specific app names like "Facebook", "Twitter", or my own app's very specific name (as long as it isn't generic)
Why wouldn't they? As somebody pointed out elsewhere, ads on various scummy sites show up if you search for "Firefox" and other things on regular Google search. I'd guess people who are searching for something specific are more likely to actually make a purchase or whatever, so they'd be more valuable to Google.
A New Way for Google to accept your money in an auction for placement slots (that displace actual search positions).
Obviously a winning move for google, but not really a win for anybody else (besides people trying to arbitrage ads for these new, search-result-displacing slots).
This is obviously Google trying to grab a piece of advertising budgets of apps and impact of this on "discoverability* will remain to be seen as emergent property later on. Definitely not the primary driver behind this feature.
However, before we start booing Google...
Facebook already holds unarguably the biggest part of this already, and Google heading closer to the center of that particular arena will likely result in a net positive for publishers.
My guess for would be that this will push Facebook little by little to specialize in iOS ad-mongering.
Google heading closer to the center of that particular arena will likely result in a net positive for publishers.
How so? Pay to Play (the marketing slogan for this initiative practically writes itself) seems a net negative to me. Searching for a particular game? Prepare to see nothing but Zynga, King and whatever other well capitalized companies can afford to dominate the top of the lists. Google will have even less incentive to fix natural discoverability.
Comparing Facebook's mobile ad channel (in content) to Google's mobile ad channel (in SERPs) is like more akin to comparing AdSense to AdWords. We won't see Google take a share of the pie from Facebook, we'll probably just see the pie get bigger as Google makes more ad inventory available.
Will these promoted apps be as dangerous as websites promoted by browser search? I got this one just now [1]. Virustotal for "Firefox" from that site [2].
I might be missing something here but why is everybody hating on Google for this? How is this different from having sponsored results in the search results on Google? I feel this is great for a number of reasons:
1. This allows apps which are new to not just rely on something unreliable as App store optimization to get downloads.
2. This will force app developers to think about monetization more seriously and possibly even get rid of free apps culture.
3. You can get users at the point of their query. Facebook gets you passive users. For example on FB you might need to reach 100 people to find one person who has a problem solved by your app, but using this you can find the exact people looking for apps which solve the problem your app is about.
4. The argument about Zynga and King owning the sponsored are false. It is like saying Microsoft, Twitter and Facebook are going to own the search results on Google.
5. Improvement in organic search doesn't need to happen without starting sponsored results.
BTW forgot to add this might also mean that Google will open up the search info on Play Store just like they did for Google search to enable advertisers to choose keywords more intelligently. This alone will probably make up for any other issues people have related to this new initiative.
> I might be missing something here but why is everybody hating on Google for this?
I don't like this form of paid promotion within Google Play because it means that users will see fewer quality apps in their searches and more expensive apps. It will be harder for users to find enjoyable games and easier for them to find addictive, extortionate games that constantly demand the purchase of gems and coins and other upgrades. When there exist two applications that perform the same function, paid promotions will ensure that the Google Play user will first see the one that will end up costing him the most, rather than the one that would best serve his purpose.
> How is this different from having sponsored results in the search results on Google?
Google earns money through sales and in-app purchasing of the apps found on Google Play. This is not true of the web search results found at google.com. Because of this, it serves Google's interests to direct Google Play users to apps that extract more money, whereas with Google Search, Google is motivated to return the most relevant possible links.
> 1. This allows apps which are new to not just rely on something unreliable as App store optimization to get downloads.
This will make it harder for new apps and new developers to be discovered, not easier. Everyone can compete in the app store optimization arena equally by researching and changing keywords and descriptions in their app copy. However only apps that have an average per-user revenue that exceeds the promotional placement price will be able to justify competing with these paid promotional placements.
> 2. This will force app developers to think about monetization more seriously and possibly even get rid of free apps culture.
Yes, this will encourage developers to work harder to monetize their users. I would prefer if developers were motivated to work harder to please their users instead.
> 3. You can get users at the point of their query. Facebook gets you passive users. For example on FB you might need to reach 100 people to find one person who has a problem solved by your app, but using this you can find the exact people looking for apps which solve the problem your app is about.
Yes, this makes it more efficient for developers to purchase users. Being bought and sold more easily is bad for the users. From the user's perspective, it would be better to have an honest response from a Google Play search. One that finds them the app that best suits their purpose as effectively as Google Search finds them useful web pages.
> 4. The argument about Zynga and King owning the sponsored are false. It is like saying Microsoft, Twitter and Facebook are going to own the search results on Google.
Zynga and King.com buy an incredible amount of advertising space. They will certainly take advantage of this promotional opportunity, but it isn't these two companies that will dominate all search results. In every niche in both games and applications there will be some app whose developer has figured out the best way to prey on human psychology by withholding features, ransoming data or peddling in-game content to maximize revenue from each download. With paid promotional placements, those apps will be each dominate over apps that are designed to be the most useful or entertaining.
>5. Improvement in organic search doesn't need to happen without starting sponsored results.
No, but with promotional placements Google will be motivated to make the organic search results less relevant. Google profits more when their ads are clicks and when the more expensive apps are installed.
With promotional placement in the Google Play search results, Google is double-dipping from the app economy by charging 30% from app sales plus charging developers to even make those sales in the first place. Since Google gets to chose the outcome of searches in their app store, they will be doubly motivated to disregard app quality and rank the long-term priciest apps most highly.
"In fact, in the past year, we paid more than $7 billion to developers distributing apps and games on Google Play."
Do they mean when I buy someone's app and send them my money that they are taking the credit for "paying" the developer? If so then that's wrong. My bank doesn't pay my bills. I pay my bills using my bank's system.
The biggest improvement they could make is having the Apps category NOT include games. Discovering useful and/or interesting apps is so damn hard because of games being included.
This is a great example of Google doing what Google does best. With one slot gone, app publishers will need to focus on an ASO much more. SEO remains one of the most effective ways of marketing on web, and so too will ASO be in the app marketplace.
My gripe with this is that it further monopolizes the ad network market. On the web AdSense and AdWords are king. At least on mobile we have several choices, of which AdMob isn't even the best. I guess Google will be king of this arena too.
If it were anyone else, I'd say this was pretty dubious, but Google knows better than anyone else how to make search ads work for everyone so... we'll see.
I agree - hopefully this addresses the issue of giving newer applications visibility. However, this definitely needs to be implemented tactfully. Google is probably the best bet for getting something like this to work.
Because if they improve discoverability for free, then who will buy their adverts? The worse the store is at pointing you at the correct apps, the more ads people will buy (so less work for them and more $$$, win/win).
It isn't helped by how large of a stranglehold Google has gained on the Android ecosystem. Amazon is the next largest, but still tiny by comparison. Piracy might outnumber Amazon frankly.