Apple abandons affiliate program to promote applications from the App Store

One of the most talked about news last week was Apple’s decision to renegotiate the terms of a partnership with third-party sources that bring traffic to the market. On August 1, thousands of developers and reviewers received a concise letter of notification from the administration:

Thank you for participating in the affiliate program for apps. App of app, you will be removing apps from the affiliate program. Starting on October 1st, 2018, iOS and Mac apps. All other content types (music, movies, books, and TV) remain in the affiliate program.

The essence of cooperation was that the owners of personal websites or blogs could place on their resource a link to the company's products and receive a small percentage of each purchase, which they contributed by redirecting the client to the market. The consequences of this decision are probably indirectly affected by so many.

On closer inspection, an unpleasant surprise turns out not to be such a surprise: Apple launched a trial balloon last year, voicing its intention to cut commissions for promoting apps and inapps from 7 to 2.5%. However, at that time, the rising storm of popular indignation was still able to impress her - in the end, the company limited itself to lowering the rates only for inapps . Nevertheless, there was still a precedent, and already on the basis of this it was possible to conclude that the affiliate program began to lose profitability.

Improving the detection methods that Apple refers to in its letter is a process that was also launched about a year ago. Last September, iOS 11 was released, where, among other things, a radically new design of the App Store was introduced. One of the main differences from the old version was a significant expansion of the recommendatory component. The administration began to spend much more effort and space on the screen to draw the attention of users to the most worthy products. The classic top charts were supplemented with collections with different themes, the passing banners “Game of the Day” and “App of the Day”, as well as a special column with small daily articles from the editorial board, where it is lively and interestingly told about teams and projects. In the autumn, the Mac App Store on macOS Mojave will acquire the same view, which will be the final touch for the new policy.

At the same time, Apple began to show significantly more interest in direct dialogue with developers. The site has a page with an invitation to cooperation and a special form of communication for those who want to get on the front pages. As it quickly turned out, this was done not just for the sake of formality: the editors do respond to what they send to them. The chances of getting into the features and getting a splash of installs from an average developer have increased significantly .
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Already in the first six months, the new system began to show results . Despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of users still access the products they need through an internal search on the site, the number of downloads due to recommendations increased from 10 to 15%, which, if we consider the average values ​​for all categories, put them in second place among the sources traffic. Third-party referrals began to lag behind - it is precisely this that may have predetermined their fate.



Dynamics of the percentage of downloads through internal transitions

So, the reasons for non-payment to partners are quite transparent. What consequences should be expected?

The most serious damage will obviously be those who were involved in making recommendations on a professional and semi-professional basis: from autonomous bloggers-reviewers to large publications with a whole staff of employees, such as, say, TouchArcade, whose editor-in-chief made a pessimistic official statement . Their services do not become unclaimed, but cease to generate stable profits. With the departure from the scene, the Apple Miscrosoft Store remains the only large app store offering a referral fee. Accordingly, as TouchArcade predicts, many recommendation resources will not be able to stay afloat.

It is difficult to read it in some other way than “if earlier we recognized some microscopic value at the work of third-party editors, now we no longer see it at all”. Honestly, I have no idea what will happen to TouchArcade now. Even in the most difficult times and after the most unexpected turns, which we experienced with the industry, we could always count on income from the Apple affiliate program - and this is logical, because we brought a lot of buyers to them. I don’t know what conclusion can be made from all this, except that Apple decided to show middle fingers to sites like TouchArcade and AppShopper, which for many years popularized the App Store and games on iOS.

- Eli Hodep, chief editor of the TouchArcade gaming portal

To some extent, developers will also be affected - in the first place, indie developers, for whom blocking even a side channel of cash receipts can have serious consequences. But it is not only about the loss of a direct source of profit for those who received a commission for links on a personal website. A more fundamental problem is that, due to the reduction in the number of sites, cooperation with the media on the Internet will become difficult.

As mentioned above, unlike reviewers, developers receive a kind of compensation from Apple’s new policy: advanced marketing options. However, one resource will hardly be able to cover all the variety of formats that Internet media has offered so far, not to mention providing exact targeting that could be achieved by selecting sites with the appropriate audience. In addition, although at the moment it is still difficult to identify clear trends, there is no doubt that Apple has its own opinion on which niches should be covered and which should be avoided. Utopia with equal chances for all teams is unlikely.

If we talk about users, the new policy will lead, first of all, to the fact that the Internet will become less polyphonic for them. Whatever level the Apple recommender system may attain, it will always represent the point of view of a particular corporation with its own interests and ambitions. Other groups and individuals lose the incentive to offer an alternative view in the form of an in-depth analysis of products on a regular basis. If reviews turn into a non-monetized hobby, many well-known among gamers and IT-enthusiasts of the site will cease to exist, and the corresponding communities will fall apart with them. The most dark-minded representatives see Apple’s desire to monopolize “public opinion” threatening intentions, those who are less inclined to conspiracy theories just mourn the layer of Internet culture, which may now be a thing of the past.