Apple Adds New App Store Ad Placements - What You Need to Know

September 30th, 2022

by Anh Nguyen

COO & Co-Founder at Gummicube, Inc

Welcome to this week’s ASO Weekly – Gummicube’s recurring segment where we discuss some of the biggest events in the mobile app industry, app store developments, and how they may affect your App Store Optimization (ASO marketing) strategy.

Just this week, Apple opened up new ad placements in time for the holiday season. In an increased effort to maximize the store experience for users and revenue opportunities for developers, these new ad placements are added evidence of an evolved store presence with UA expansion. The biggest news of all? The new ad placement will now be on the “Today” tab on the App Store.

Apple Introduces New Ads to The App Store – Here’s What You Need to Know

The Impacts of Inflation & Economic Uncertainty

The message is clear: Apple is investing in a significant expansion in its ad inventory for the App Store – bringing new opportunities for developers to improve their paid mobile user acquisition campaigns. This addition comes just in time for the holiday season when advertising spending reaches its peak in a year. With inflation, the payoff of these ads might still leave developers with some resistance.

The Apple ad addition comes in a time of economic flux. With inflation on the rise, the price of ads and ad placements could come with a heavy price tag for some developers with a stricter budget. The App Store hiked up prices in the EU just last week, with app prices jumping up around 20% across most EU countries.

Ads are Rolling out Mid-October – Who is Eligible?

In its initial correspondence with developers, Apple didn’t reveal where the new ad placement was going to be. However, just this week Apple reveals the new placement will be located on the “Today” tab of the store. The advertising slot has the same requirements as any other, with a requirement from developers to have an approved product page for any and all ASA campaigns. The new ASA slots are open now, but ads won’t be released until mid-October.

How to Prepare for Better Ad Performance

Paid mobile user acquisition on the App Store always requires a strong ASO backbone to be successful. Successful paid ad campaigns by nature, can and should help you drive down your time and effort in executing a meaningful marketing action. Some of the best App Store Optimization strategies help developers actually lower the cost of ad spend on the app stores through driving relevancy.

Best practices like iteration, seasonality, and localization among others simultaneously help users and app store algorithms understand your app better. As you work through this relevance, ad spend costs are effectively driven down. Optimizing app metadata and creatives all work together to fulfill the user acquisition funnel, improving and streamlining its completion.