Spooky season is now over, Halloween came and went and we’re already on our way to the rest of the holiday season! Meanwhile, the mobile industry has kept busy and we have a lot of news to share! From Apple’s new ASA placements to Netflix and Microsoft pushing into the mobile gaming space, read on to find out!

Apple Search Ads’ new placements are here

A couple of weeks ago, Apple announced new placements for Apple Search Ads campaigns, notably in the Today tab as well as in the You may like section at the bottom of apps’ product pages. These new placements will help Apple grow ASA, although Search Ads already benefited from Apple’s ATT with a market share now three times what it was before.

However, the launch was a little rocky with app product pages being stormed by ad for gambling apps. Several developers reported an unusually high amount of ads for gambling apps appearing on their app page, something that might prejudice them. 

For example, Simon found a gambling ad in 3 out of 10 cases while checking his app’s product page. Several developers have expressed concerns, saying that their app being associated with gambling apps might harm their reputation. 

Developers were disappointed and Apple temporarily stopped showing gambling ads in the You might like section. They did not specify how they would handle the problem going forward. 

Apple is not done with new ad formats, Digiday recently announced that Apple was working on an ad-supported subscription plan for Apple TV.

Other App Store News 

Have a question for Apple? You can now ask them directly! Apple launched Ask Apple this month, a new tool that will provide developers with interactive Q&As and consultations in Slack. To participate, you need to be a member of the Apple Developer Program or the Apple Developer Enterprise Program before registering (Ask Apple is free of charge). 

In other news, Apple rolled out French language support on the US App Store.

You can now also view preview videos on the web App Store page. Previously, they were only visible on the mobile version of the App Store. 

Last but not least, Apple drew Meta’s ire with a last-minute rule change: boosted social media posts are now considered in-app purchases and are subject to Apple’s famous 30% commission. 

Google rolls out new ad center for users

Google is rolling out My Ad Center to all users. This new tool will allow users to have more say in the ads they’ll be seeing. 

The available options are:

• The ability to turn off ads personalization
• Limit ads in certain topic categories
• Indicate specific interests
• Choose the specific types of data that Google can or can’t use in targeting you with ads (like turning off access to your YouTube history for example)

The impact on advertisers will most likely be limited. Indeed, it would need users to be first aware of that tool and then go through the process of enacting those changes. Only a small portion of users should take advantage of this new tool. 

Google’s FLEDGE is stuck

FLEDGE is Google’s solution for the upcoming disappearance of third-party cookies. It was opened to beta-testing earlier this year but according to Digiday, “only five ad tech vendors have expressed an interest in testing the FLEDGE, or the “First Locally-Executed Decision over Groups Experiment,” to date. And of those, only RTB House, Criteo and Google itself are doing so in any meaningful way”.

So far, the issues seem to be:

• FLEDGE only handles retargeting which means marketers don’t know if users converted
• No proper reach and frequency controls
• Google is the sole gatekeeper

Advertisers will just have to wait and see as testing progresses. To find out more about FLEDGE and Google’s plan for its privacy sandbox, read our article about it. 

TikTok launches App Profiles

App Profiles are the latest tool for TikTok app campaigns. Now, when users see an ad for your app or game, you can create an App Profil that will show them a duplicate of your app’s App Store product page inside TikTok. 

Although all the information (name, description, screenshots, rankings, etc.) is automatically gathered from the App Store (this is only available for iOS devices as of now) it can all be edited.

According to TikTok, App Profiles improve CPIs by up to 27%. 

Microsoft wants its own mobile game store

The investigation of Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard by the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has brought to light Microsoft’s plan of building a mobile game store. 

This mobile game store would be an expansion of the Xbox Store and set up as a direct competitor to the Play Store and the App Store. 

According to their plan, they would rely partially on the acquisition of Activision Blizzard since it would transfer ownership of King (developer of Candy Crush) and Call of Duty: Mobile.

There’s no precise timeline as of yet, but the first step will be to wait for the CMA’s decision on Activision’s acquisition.

More ads coming to Instagram soon

Meta announced new ad placements on Instagram earlier this month. Soon, it will be possible to place ads in both the Explore page and users’ profiles. It would look like this:

No date has been announced yet, but testing should start soon. In the meantime, Meta is betting on brand-new badges to try and push users to use Reels more. They’re currently testing “achievement badges” to congratulate users who have created a certain amount of Reels or are being creative. However, these badges will only be visible by the user. 

On the Facebook side of things, Meta is testing ‘post-loop’ video ads in Facebook Reels, a video ad lasting from 4 to 10 seconds that will play after the first loop of a Facebook Reel (the Reel will restart after the ad). If testing is successful, it could come to Instagram Reels as well. 

On the acquisition side, Meta has been asked by the UK’s antitrust regulator to sell Giphy as it has been determined the acquisition would raise antitrust concerns. 

Netflix will create its own mobile games studio

After acquiring several mobile games studios, Netflix has decided to create its own, in pursuit of success in the mobile gaming industry. The firm is currently building its own game studio in Finland. Despite the chilly welcome to its current games (only 1% of Netflix subscribers are playing Netflix’s mobile games), the firm is still betting on mobile games for its future. 

In the meantime, they’re launching their ad-supported tier in early November, a month before Disney.

Numbers of the month

• European app makers are spending $1.5 billion on social channels a month
• Consumer spending on apps drops almost 5% in Q3 2022 
• 74% of consumers use mobile ads to discover new apps 
• Western Europe sees a 27% surge in hardcore mobile gaming
• 1% of publishers are responsible for 91% of app revenue 
• Homa raises another $100 million for its data-driven mobile gaming tools 
• In-game advertising platform Bidstack raises $11 million
• Mobile shopping app visits are up 22% this holiday season
• Voodoo has exceeded 6B downloads with their +100 hyper-casual games, which places it third globally for downloads behind Meta and Google since the App Store’s creation                           
• UK advertisers spent $736M on social ads per month in 2022
• Only 31% Of Mobile Gamers Think Ad Frequency Is Acceptable
• Hyper Casual games accounted for approximately a third of downloads of the top 100 games globally in 2021.
• $1.54B spent per week on mobile games in Q3 2022
•  Netflix says it has 55 more games in development  
• Google hit with a $113 million fine in India for anti-competitive practices with the Play Store’s policies
• 2022 has seen 976 deals so far in the gaming industry

October’s App Marketing Snack episodes

• Creating visual assets for a mobile game with Karyna Mykytiuk, Colossi Games⎮App Marketing Snack #19
• Secrets to mobile games marketing with Akseli Virtanen, Traplight Games⎮The App Marketing Snack #20

What we talked about this month

• Understanding mobile games’ genres
• Get your creatives in the Halloween spirit
• ASO Best Practices: make the most of your screenshots

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Marine Nozerand

Hi there, I'm Marine (she/her), I'm a Content Manager at Apptamin. Apptamin is a creative agency specialized in app videos (video ads, app store videos, etc.).

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