When a user searches on the App Store, your ad can appear at the top of their search results. And starting in 2026, we’ll be introducing more ads to increase opportunity in search results.
[…]
Your ad will run in either the existing position — at the top of search results — or further down in search results. If you have a search results campaign running, your ad will be automatically eligible for all available positions, but you can’t select or bid for a particular one.
Me: I really hate the advert when you search on the App Store, I wish Apple would change that.
Apple: Wish granted!
I have a bad feeling about this.
App Store search is ineffective and primitive, and doesn’t reliably show high-quality, relevant results for queries.
How can it be improved?
More advanced search algorithms, like the last two decades? Nope!
AI-assisted relevance and ranking, like this decade? Nope!
When all you have is an insatiable desire for more “services revenue”, you can only see one solution…
Why should Apple just take 30% of the lifetime value of your customers in perpetuity when they can charge you 90% of that just to acquire them!
Do additional ad positions in App Store search mean that if someone searches for your app by name, Apple can bury your app even lower than its current (hopefully) #2 position in the results?
Previously:
In an email to developers this week, Apple indicated that it will begin showing additional ads in App Store search results starting Tuesday, March 3.
Previously:
With Apple’s introduction of a second search ad, for any query where we weren’t #1, we’ve effectively moved down one position.
We can thank Liquid Glass for allowing even more of this “content” to show through. If you’re counting at home, roughly 70% of the interface is covered in ads. A casino ad, to boot.
[…]
A week later, here is the effect this change has had on our downloads.
Previously:
I wanted to share some updated numbers from our own apps. To isolate the impact, these numbers only include App Store Search impressions from iOS devices, comparing Mar 26–Apr 8 to the prior two weeks. In other words: how much visibility we’ve lost in search.
[…]
It’s still early, but the pattern continues: visibility is holding when we pay and dropping when we don’t.
I feel like a variation of Zero-One-Infinity is a good rule of thumb for ads, too. From the perspective of users — and probably developers — zero was the best number of ads for Apple to show in App Store search results. One was worse but acceptable. But now that they’re showing more than one, they’re on their way to infinity. They’ve started down the slippery slope. Remember when Google only showed one ad in search results?
Anyway, who’s looking forward to ads in Apple Maps this summer?
That Apple is willingly embarking on this enshittification is just mind blowing. They don’t need to do this. They don’t need this revenue. Google having no taste or respect for its users, I get, that’s their business model. But this is at odds with Apple’s business model of delighting the actual customer.
yopp:
Sadly this is Tim Cook’s legacy.
Previously:
The Apple Ads division recently formed a group called Emerging Team, and its representatives are reaching out to developers looking to reactivate or try out ads in the company’s ecosystem for the first time.
Our update after two weeks showed consistently less search ad impressions for our apps, unless we invested heavily in paying for Search Ads.
Here are some updated numbers.
Still not looking good.
And the results for Nihongo have been pretty depressing.
Before the rollout, my organic and paid downloads had remained pretty steady for most of the last year. After the rollout, my my organic installs dropped, and my paid installs rose. My overall downloads actually stayed roughly flat, but a large chunk of what used to be organic downloads appears to have shifted into paid downloads instead[…] Essentially, my ad spend almost doubled while overall downloads remained steady.
Via Marco Arment:
Why stop at 2 ads in App Store search results?
Why not just eliminate the organic search results entirely and show ONLY ads for all search and browse pages, thereby forcing developers to pay for EVERY new customer?
THAT’s the Apple way!
These ads are effectively another surcharge Apple has foisted upon developers for the privilege of distributing software to my iPhone and yours. Far from being premium “curated” experience, the App Store is this way because Apple has every incentive to steadily make it a little bit worse for users and developers — because where else are you going to go for your iPhone apps?
Advertising App Store App Store Search Ads iOS iOS 26 Search
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