Apple Store Search Ads began in 2016, around the time when Apple just announced a financial goal to double Services revenue by the year 2020, in which they have indeed reached that goal easily. At the time, the Search Ads were available and sold only in the United States. Afterwards, Apple had set its sights to quickly expand the ad service in a global scale.
Just over five years since it launched, the App Store Search Ads has now been released in China, as reported by the AppInChina blog.
Being the world’s most populous country with over 1.4 billion people, the People’s Republic of China is obviously a huge market. However, strict advertising rules in China limit exactly what can be promoted. Developers will have to upload special documents and acquire explicit approval right before being permitted to bid for keywords on the Apple Search Ads platform. This complex hurdle is most likely the reason why it took Apple so long to even launch Search Ads in China at all.
In the first place, China is restrictive on what apps can be listed on the App Store. The biggest revenue maker in Apple’s App Store is games, and only a small number of the total game apps in the US store are available in China because by law, they must obtain local licenses first in order to be listed there.
If companies are able to overcome the administrative obstacles successfully, then the Search Ads in China could become a very lucrative business venture. With its current regional availability, it is estimated that the Search Ads can bring in over a billion dollars a year in revenue for Apple.
In May, Apple expanded their Search Ads program with a new noticeable ad placement shown on the root page of the Search tab in the App Store. Previously, users would have to first do a search before any sponsored ad item became visible.
Image: Apple.com
In my point of view, The decision apple made is super weird, already Apple has its own huge share value, and the price its products at the cost of the sky where middle-class people can’t offer it, And now if they rolled out ads for their app store then what value does apple own, it turns itself an ordinary android phone. Even the reason they claim is not acceptable.