0:00:00Welcome to Under the Radar, a show about independent iOS app development.
0:00:03I'm Marco Arment.
0:00:05And I'm David Smith.
0:00:06Under the Radar is never longer than 30 minutes, so let's get started.
0:00:09So today we wanted to talk about these interesting changes that were announced about the App
0:00:13Store today.
0:00:15As of the time we recorded, they were announced about an hour ago.
0:00:18Apple has officially recognized the speed of app review times being improved, some updates
0:00:25to the auto-renewing subscription plans
0:00:28and some expansions of capabilities to subscriptions
0:00:31there.
0:00:31And then number three is they've announced
0:00:34that search ads will be coming to the App Store.
0:00:36What do you say we talk about the subscription changes?
0:00:39Sure.
0:00:39So as best we can tell-- and there's a great page.
0:00:42We'll have a link to it in the show notes--
0:00:44of the what's new in subscriptions
0:00:46that Apple's laid out.
0:00:48So there's some good color you get from Phil's interview,
0:00:50but the real meat of it is on developer.apple.com.
0:00:54And it seems like there's two or three big deals.
0:00:58One is that you can now essentially offer auto-renewing subscriptions in any app type.
0:01:05This used to be really somewhat of a vaguely defined rule,
0:01:10but you had to be a magazine or a cloud services company or a dating site,
0:01:15I think were the three things that you could do.
0:01:17Yeah, it was always--this rule has always been very vague.
0:01:20It used to only be, like, periodic content.
0:01:22First, it used to be able to be Newstand,
0:01:23like in the very, very first implementation of it,
0:01:26back in 2011.
0:01:27And then it kind of expanded to be like,
0:01:30well, it could be Newstand or it could be
0:01:33a handful of things that had like, you know,
0:01:36recurring costs like cloud services company.
0:01:39Like I know Evernote started using it very early on
0:01:41for their premium service and it was the kind of thing
0:01:44where you could apply to do it
0:01:46and you could submit an app that did it
0:01:48and it seemed fairly inconsistent
0:01:51as to what got through App Review for that and what didn't,
0:01:54and what counted as an ongoing service or ongoing content
0:01:57and what didn't count.
0:01:58And so it was always very kind of risky
0:02:02to attempt to do that if you were just an app
0:02:05that wanted subscription revenue for some other reason
0:02:07outside of those narrowly defined boxes.
0:02:10- Yeah, and so now that seems like those kind of criterias
0:02:14are going away and any app category or type is available?
0:02:19I think, I mean that honestly,
0:02:21that's still left a little bit vague
0:02:22in the language on the page.
0:02:24It's still left a little bit vague.
0:02:27It's still kind of sounds like,
0:02:30okay now any app category can do this,
0:02:34but you still should be offering some kind of like
0:02:39ongoing service backing it
0:02:41or some kind of ongoing content delivery.
0:02:44So it's still a little like,
0:02:45so if you just made like a really good calculator
0:02:47that didn't have a service behind it.
0:02:49It's not entirely clear that you would be allowed
0:02:52to subscription price it.
0:02:54- Yeah, and I think that is probably
0:02:55the most significant thing to note,
0:02:57is that it does seem like the,
0:02:59like on the developer page they're talking about
0:03:03the types of auto-renewable subscriptions
0:03:05are for content or for services.
0:03:08And so it doesn't sound like in the sense of
0:03:10if you wanted to just say like,
0:03:11here's my app and you will pay me,
0:03:15whatever, a few dollars a month, a year to use this going forward, that you would be
0:03:21able to.
0:03:22There'd have to be something that you were giving the user on an ongoing basis.
0:03:27And I'm sure there's many ways around that.
0:03:29You can just kind of structure something in your app that will check that box.
0:03:35But it doesn't sound like if you were just trying to do a general purpose, if you want
0:03:40to use my app, you have to pay. That doesn't sound like that's quite there, but it's
0:03:49expanding it certainly more, and I imagine as this gets rolled out and people start sort
0:03:54of pushing the edges of it, we'll have a better understanding of exactly what that
0:03:58means. But at the very least, more people are going to be able to do subscriptions than
0:04:04could do subscriptions before.
0:04:06- Yeah, and it seems like the implementation of them
0:04:09is certainly improving, but it seems like it's based on
0:04:12the auto renewing subscription type
0:04:14that we've had since 2011.
0:04:16You know, it's still, it isn't like some kind of separate
0:04:19app store payment structure, like you know,
0:04:21free versus paid up front, like it's not gonna be like
0:04:24automatic, it seems like it's going to be a lot more like
0:04:27what we had before, which is here's an in-app purchase type,
0:04:29you have to, as a developer, you have to code the support
0:04:32for this in-app purchase type in your app,
0:04:34you probably have to write the backing service
0:04:35to validate them, I'm sure there's gonna be like,
0:04:38I'm sure there's companies that will do that for you
0:04:40for a fee, but you are still kind of manually
0:04:43implementing this in your app, so it's not as easy as,
0:04:47if you have a paid app, a paid upfront app,
0:04:49you literally just set a box in iTunes Connect saying,
0:04:52this app costs X dollars, and you don't have to deal
0:04:54with anything else ever again, in relation to collecting
0:04:57money from people, it's not gonna be that easy,
0:04:59it's still an in-app purchase that you have to code for,
0:05:02you have to account for in your app.
0:05:04Ultimately, I think this is the better way to do it
0:05:06because this gives you flexibility in the app
0:05:08to do things like, what if you wanna have some amount
0:05:11of your app's functionality or content be available
0:05:15without subscribing, and then have some other section
0:05:17of it be available with the subscription.
0:05:19Then this allows you to set that balance yourself.
0:05:22So that, I think, is the right way to do this.
0:05:25Ultimately, though, this is, assuming that they will allow
0:05:29all apps to use this, which again, the wording is kind
0:05:32vague, I think it boils down to this one sentence on the page on their site which says, "Although
0:05:38all categories of apps will be eligible, this business model is not appropriate for every
0:05:43app." So I guess it depends on their definition of eligible and appropriate. Does that mean,
0:05:49does appropriate mean they don't recommend we do it or does appropriate mean they won't
0:05:53let us do it? So that's again still unknown. But I think subscription pricing is a really,
0:06:00interesting compromise to what developers have been asking for in the App Store for
0:06:05a long time, which is like, you know, upgrades, trials, some kind of way to make money from
0:06:09people ongoing. Because software, as we've discussed before, you know, software, people
0:06:16expect ongoing functionality. They expect updates. They expect bug fixes. They expect
0:06:21you to be putting in effort to improve and fix your software over time for them. And
0:06:27And so when they pay for it, they expect,
0:06:29not only am I paying for this software to use now,
0:06:32I'm paying for upgrades forever.
0:06:34That's basically, as much as developers like to
0:06:37fight against that with things like different versions
0:06:39and paid upgrades, the way people perceive it is,
0:06:41I pay for this thing and therefore I expect updates forever.
0:06:44And so to try to track the balance between
0:06:48what users want, which is paying either zero or one time,
0:06:52and then getting things forever,
0:06:53and versus what we need, which is ongoing revenue
0:06:55to fund the development of these ongoing things
0:06:57and to fix things over time and to improve things over time. Subscriptions, I think,
0:07:03are a really good compromise there because, look, we're never going to get paid upgrades
0:07:07in the App Store. We're never going to get automated free trials. They're giving us the
0:07:12system now. They gave us in-app purchase at first to kind of first semi-simulate free
0:07:20trials and types of upgrades, sort of, and now they're giving us subscriptions to basically
0:07:26replace ongoing upgrade revenue.
0:07:29And there's some ups, there's some downs,
0:07:31but I think it's pretty clear, this is Apple's message.
0:07:33This is them saying, we're not giving you
0:07:36those other things, this is what we're giving you,
0:07:38figure out a way to make this work for you,
0:07:40or to make the other stuff that we already offer
0:07:42through in-app purchase work for you.
0:07:43And there's, the user side of this, of course,
0:07:47is a big question mark, but the developer side of this,
0:07:51I think, is very, very clear now,
0:07:52is if you want ongoing revenue for people who just use
0:07:58your app, if you want ongoing revenue,
0:07:59you need to either find a way to convince them
0:08:01to pay for a subscription price like this,
0:08:04or you have to do something like advertising,
0:08:06where you just kind of automatically
0:08:07get paid with usage of your app over time.
0:08:11I don't know, what do you think?
0:08:14It's definitely a mixed feeling that I
0:08:16have when I saw this news, because on the one hand,
0:08:20I'm very glad that something is happening.
0:08:22I mean, we've talked about, for many episodes,
0:08:26there's a lot of things that feel not great
0:08:29in the App Store, and for years,
0:08:31it's felt like nothing was ever gonna change.
0:08:33What we had is just what it was,
0:08:35and that's where it was gonna be in eternity.
0:08:39And I'm very excited that things are changing,
0:08:43that whether this is a result of Phil Schiller
0:08:46taking over the App Store more fully,
0:08:49or if it was just time for this to happen,
0:08:51or whatever the reason, something has caused this,
0:08:54like changes to start happening.
0:08:55The things are starting to sort of bubble up
0:08:57in the app store and are changing,
0:09:00which overall I'm pretty excited about,
0:09:03'cause I think things weren't in a great place,
0:09:04and I mean, you never know,
0:09:06it could be worse overall in the end,
0:09:07but I'd rather have, I'd rather sort of find my way
0:09:10in a store that was evolving and changing,
0:09:13'cause in a lot of ways, like being a small developer,
0:09:17there's a lot of benefits when things are more in flux because I can try things out
0:09:23with much less overhead and kind of dive in and there's less risk than if I was a bigger
0:09:27company. I can be a bit more flexible and agile in that way. So overall, I like that.
0:09:35I'm not sure if an expansion of auto-renewable subscriptions is fundamentally going to improve
0:09:44the situation in terms of making a viable business in the App Store.
0:09:49I think the types of applications where it will make sense exist, but they are more and
0:09:56more limited.
0:09:59And the thing that I worry about as a user is if this is where software goes, but like,
0:10:07if all of my software requires an ongoing subscription to have, there's a very, I think
0:10:13you'll hit a fatigue point with that, where customers won't want to download software
0:10:19or new software if in their mind it's going to come with it a monthly charge of a dollar
0:10:25a month or whatever it is on their iTunes account every single month in order to use
0:10:31any of the apps, and if they stop paying, all of a sudden all their apps stop working.
0:10:35And so I would imagine a lot of customers would push against that, and in many ways
0:10:41that could push even stronger pressure towards the just sort of like software being free
0:10:47model where the expectation is that it'll be free. And the reality is in the App Store
0:10:52right now, I mean, this is my own experience from trying every business model known to
0:10:56man is that the most success I've ever had is in the just sort of give it all away for
0:11:02free and put ads in it model, which I don't love. But I have a hard time believing that
0:11:10the percentage of my customers who would be willing to pay a non-insignificant amount.
0:11:17One thing that I'm very curious about is there's a bunch of stuff in here about 200 different
0:11:24price points and you can specify different price points in different territories and
0:11:27there's a lot more flexibility there.
0:11:30I'm really intrigued to see if we're going to get something where the payments that we
0:11:35we are charging can be lower, or like in a way that charging somebody a couple of dollars
0:11:43a year may be a bit more palatable than charging them a minimum of 99 cents per month, which
0:11:50I believe is in the current form of auto-renewing in-app purchases. That's the lowest tier
0:11:56you could do, is a dollar a month. And maybe I'm being a little hard on my own software,
0:12:04But I don't think a lot of people would view a lot of what I make as worth more than that,
0:12:10where they're paying $12 a year for it.
0:12:14But maybe they would be willing to pay a few dollars a year for it.
0:12:18And so if there's those types of things, that's interesting to me.
0:12:21And I'm also quite interested in the way that in-app purchase or auto-renewing in-app purchase
0:12:26has a lot of flexibility in it, like the actual fundamental API as it exists today and I imagine
0:12:30going forward, where it has built in support for things like free trials and bonus periods
0:12:37and things where you can have a bit more flexibility about the way someone is being onboarded into
0:12:44paying for your software or for your service.
0:12:49So that's certainly nice in terms of a lot of people have been asking for years for free
0:12:53trials on the App Store and with in-app purchase you can sort of get there.
0:12:58how that goes, like, is going to be an interesting thing to navigate an app review of. App review
0:13:03typically doesn't allow your app to be, have a time-limited free trial, but you can sort
0:13:10of get around that if your app is tied to an online service, and so will we be able
0:13:15to work something out there, but, like I said, overall, it's kind of this weird mixed feeling
0:13:21of, "I feel like I'm glad that this is changing, I really hope this isn't the only change that
0:13:27we're going to see in the near future, but I think it's a good thing overall that it's
0:13:32happening. And the reality is, even if maybe only a very particular genre of application
0:13:40will now be made more viable, maybe that's enough. It doesn't have to benefit me or you
0:13:46necessarily, but if all of a sudden there's a few hundred developers who can now make
0:13:52a viable run at the App Store, that sounds great overall.
0:13:56- Yeah, I mean, and as you said,
0:13:59I don't think this is going to address,
0:14:01there are basically two challenges
0:14:04that developers face for monetization in the App Store,
0:14:06two big ones, one of which, one of those challenges is
0:14:10when people do want to give you money,
0:14:13our options for how to collect that money have been limited.
0:14:16And this addresses that head on.
0:14:18This gives a lot more developers a way to collect money
0:14:21in a different way that might be a better way
0:14:22that might earn them more over time.
0:14:24And the second challenge that developers face
0:14:27with monetization is that there's just so many other apps
0:14:30out there that it's hard to convince people
0:14:32to pay anything for your app if there's a million
0:14:34other free ones that do something close enough.
0:14:37And this is not going to address that at all.
0:14:41I do kind of argue, though, in general,
0:14:44that that's not really Apple's problem.
0:14:46That's our problem as developers.
0:14:47That's just the market.
0:14:48The market is full of competition and full of alternatives.
0:14:52And if somebody else can offer the same thing for us
0:14:55that we can for cheaper, then good on them.
0:14:58That's their prerogative.
0:15:00And so I think this is Apple doing what they can
0:15:04to help apps that are worth paying for
0:15:06earn more money or collect money more easily
0:15:10and to solve ongoing revenue in a new way.
0:15:15Which before we only had, basically we had crappy ways
0:15:18to do it before and now we have a less crappy way
0:15:20do it potentially. I have in the past written about how much I didn't like the implementation
0:15:25of auto-renewing subscriptions. I'm reserving judgment of this new one until I see it and
0:15:31possibly even use it for my subscriptions. We'll see. But they say they're changing it.
0:15:36This is like Subscriptions 2.0 they're saying. So I'm willing to give it a shot. We'll see
0:15:41if it's improved in meaningful ways. It sounds from the language on the page that it has.
0:15:47So I will wait and see on that.
0:15:49Before we quickly leave this topic,
0:15:51the other thing to talk about on the subscription front
0:15:53is that they're changing their revenue split.
0:15:56That they are, so normally their revenue split is 70/30,
0:15:59Apple gets, we get 70, Apple gets 30.
0:16:02For auto-renewing subscriptions of this new type,
0:16:06or all actually, for auto-renewing subscriptions,
0:16:08they're changing the split from 70/30 to 85/15
0:16:13after the first year.
0:16:15So any subscriber you've had for more than a year,
0:16:17you will start to earn more from them.
0:16:19You'll start to earn 85% instead of 70%.
0:16:22So this is basically incentivizing you to create,
0:16:26if you have a way to make money from people over time,
0:16:30this is incentivizing you to both use this system
0:16:33for doing that and to make something that is worth
0:16:37people subscribing to for more than a year.
0:16:40And that's kinda cool.
0:16:41And it's kinda cool to see, you know,
0:16:43This is the first exception to the 70/30 rule, at least that's been publicized in the history
0:16:50of the App Store.
0:16:51I was able to find an article on, I think it was Recode that I'll link to in the show
0:16:56notes from back in April that said that some of the video services on the Apple TV were
0:17:02getting this 85/15 deal right up front as part of the negotiation with Apple.
0:17:07But other than that, I have never heard of any exceptions to the 70/30 split.
0:17:11So I think this is interesting, and it's interesting to consider too, like, where Apple might go
0:17:15with the 8515 option in the future. They can use this as a way to incentivize development
0:17:23in a certain way or on certain platforms that need help. So for instance, if Apple TV isn't
0:17:28getting enough developer attention, they could say, "All right, now everything on Apple TV
0:17:31is 8515." If they wanted to incentivize people to go to the Mac App Store, they could say,
0:17:36"All right, now all Mac App Store apps are 8515." So something interesting to consider
0:17:40is using this new lower commission, basically,
0:17:45so we make more money, as a way to incentivize
0:17:48different development or apps on different platforms
0:17:50that need incentives to spur development.
0:17:54- Exactly, and I think the actual impact of this
0:17:58in this narrow case is it's nice.
0:18:01I mean, I guess if I had a subscription
0:18:02that had more than a year's long subscriber base,
0:18:07I'd love it.
0:18:08One day my revenue just goes up a little, but by far the more fundamental thing that
0:18:12this is really intriguing with is it's the first sort of chink in the, like, "Well, it'll
0:18:19always be 70/30 for everything forever."
0:18:23And if that's no longer true, and it's demonstrably not true, that in this particular case they're
0:18:28changing the split, what else could they change the split on?
0:18:31Like you said, they can incentivize whatever they want, and that's intriguing.
0:18:36You could imagine things where it's a different revenue split for the first revenue you make
0:18:42in a year to try and help smaller developers.
0:18:47You could imagine trying to encourage people to different platforms, to try different,
0:18:51incentivize different business models.
0:18:52There's all kinds of things that not having it be strictly 70/30 everywhere can certainly
0:19:00make the imagination run wild with.
0:19:02And so it's certainly a good thing.
0:19:05I don't think it's a me, like if your business wasn't viable at 70/30, having to wait a year
0:19:11for it to switch to 85/15 to become viable seems a little bit of a stretch.
0:19:17But it's certainly, you know, I'll take it.
0:19:19It's better than nothing for sure.
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0:20:12All right, so let's talk about App Store search ads.
0:20:15This was rumored a few weeks or months ago,
0:20:18and now it apparently is real.
0:20:21They are really doing App Store search ads.
0:20:23And so what do you think?
0:20:26I'm not delighted, that's for sure.
0:20:31The things that I think is so good at painting a word picture, as they say, for what's happening is in the App Store, when you go to the search tab, and you type in what you're looking for,
0:20:43there will now be potentially an ad at the top of that screen.
0:20:49You can get an example of this if you go to the search ads page in our show notes.
0:20:53And the placement there is going to be based on an auction and a combination of who's willing
0:20:59to pay the most for that spot, as well as some vague relevance metric.
0:21:05But essentially people are going to be able to pay money to appear in the App Store search
0:21:09tab at the top of the results, which is a pretty big deal.
0:21:16Like Apple even says on their page that about 65% of downloads come from searching in the
0:21:20App Store.
0:21:21So a substantial majority is going to be coming from there.
0:21:27And the things that come to mind first when I see this is this really is unfortunate for
0:21:32apps that are currently the second search result for a particular term.
0:21:36Because they're going to fall off the screen.
0:21:38Because previously, like back in the old days, when you did a search, you would be able to
0:21:41see maybe like five or six results at once.
0:21:44Then they switched to the cards view we have now where your first two screenshots or a
0:21:48screenshot and your app preview are shown on that first screen, and so they take up
0:21:52a lot more vertical space, and so you can see the top result and the teeny little bit
0:21:59of the second result, and now if there's an ad, you're only ever going to see that top
0:22:03result and the paid ad.
0:22:05So that's a little unfortunate, because I've definitely seen in my own apps where if you
0:22:10fall off that first page, like if the user has to scroll, it's a substantial reduction
0:22:16in user interest, views on your page, et cetera.
0:22:20So that's a pretty big deal.
0:22:22If now only two apps are gonna be shown
0:22:25in the initial search screen,
0:22:28one of them is paid to get there
0:22:29and the other one is just the top result.
0:22:31So if you're the top result, like hooray,
0:22:33things are looking good for you.
0:22:35If you're the second result or below, it's getting worse.
0:22:40And then there's just the fundamental thing about it
0:22:42when I look at it, it feels weird
0:22:45to have to pay to show up in search rather than search just being really relevant and
0:22:54helpful.
0:22:55And I can see the areas where something like this is helpful, where if you're launching
0:22:59a new app and you're never going to be the first search result on your first day, and
0:23:05so you want to try and find your way into that, like you can do a big spend on that
0:23:09first day and hope that really helps your launch, and that sort of makes sense.
0:23:15And it makes a lot of sense, I suppose, for somewhat generic terms.
0:23:19But what I worry about a lot is how they're going to police and manage, you know, when
0:23:26someone searches for a specific app.
0:23:28You know, so someone goes into the App Store and searches for pedometer++.
0:23:33And my competitor, like right now, if you go into the App Store and search pedometer++,
0:23:37I'm the number one result, which intuitively makes sense.
0:23:42But if I, in the future, you do that search, the top result is going to be a competitor
0:23:46of mine who wants to be placed on the top of there.
0:23:52That feels really weird.
0:23:53And am I going to have to pay for that?
0:23:55Like am I going to have to start paying like protection money to keep people searching
0:24:00for my app's name relevant to me?
0:24:04You know, so that I would be the both, I guess, the paid result and the natural result?
0:24:10Like, that starts to feel really weird and awkward and not great, but I mean, I don't
0:24:17know, if this is the new reality, then I'm just gonna deal with that and try as best
0:24:24I can to work it out, work it to my favor.
0:24:27But I definitely have a lot more apprehension about this than I do about the subscriptions
0:24:31change.
0:24:32Honestly, I'm excited about search ads, because if you look through their page, it seems like
0:24:37more complicated and both more simple and more complicated than what I would have guessed.
0:24:42It is auction based, which I think is good. And if you look, they have like a little screen
0:24:46shot of the interface to buy one of these ads. And they say also like, it says, ads
0:24:53will only be shown if it's relevant to the search query. If an ad is not relevant to
0:24:56what the user is looking for, it will not be shown regardless of how much you're willing
0:24:59to pay. So that means it sounds like they're going to try to make it impossible for you
0:25:04to keyword spam in a way that would be kind of odd
0:25:08or uncomfortable or inappropriate.
0:25:11I'm curious to see how that works out in practice.
0:25:12That sounds really great if it works.
0:25:14And also it looks like you can kind of let them
0:25:18kind of place you automatically if you want to
0:25:21or you can add in certain keywords that you want to bid on also.
0:25:25But it seems like it's a fairly high level buying process
0:25:29rather than a low level.
0:25:30All right, whenever you just search for this exact string,
0:25:33I will pay up to $5 to be on that first spot.
0:25:36It isn't quite that rigid or that specific it looks like.
0:25:41So I am really curious to see how they do this.
0:25:43As a developer, right now it's like,
0:25:46okay, well right now OverCached is growing
0:25:48at a rate that's okay, but I'd like it to grow faster.
0:25:50I'm willing to pay a little bit for that.
0:25:52How do I do that?
0:25:53I mean, the App Store is the perfect,
0:25:55like App Store search is the perfect place
0:25:57for me to do that, as far as I know,
0:25:59before I've ever done it.
0:26:01It seems like it'd be the perfect place to do that.
0:26:03I'm willing to pay money if somebody searches for podcasts
0:26:06to be in that top slot.
0:26:08I'm willing to try that.
0:26:11And so to have this new option to grow my app,
0:26:14if it's done tastefully, which it looks like it might be,
0:26:17this honestly looks very promising,
0:26:19the way on this page they've set up here,
0:26:21I would love to have that option.
0:26:23And it looks like it's probably not going to
0:26:26make it impossible for other apps to get discovered
0:26:28because it's so limited to what people can buy and what portion of the screen is devoted
0:26:34to this ad. I think it looks like it's going to be good, but we'll see. I think it's going
0:26:39to take a lot of experimentation of actually trying the system out, spending maybe a few
0:26:43hundred dollars buying some ads first and see what works, what doesn't. There's a lot
0:26:47of ways to advertise for apps and most of them don't work very well. This one might
0:26:52work, so I'm excited. I think this could be really good.
0:26:56And there's definitely, like we've said with all of us, I love that they're trying something,
0:27:00that they're not. Like, that part of it is good. And sort of unequivocally, I would rather
0:27:07things like this exist and make me a little nervous than things not exist at all and make
0:27:12me be even more nervous that this platform that I make my living on is just stagnant.
0:27:17So I'm definitely excited that it exists. And it's interesting, too, to think about
0:27:22how having to think about all my customers from the perspective of what are they worth
0:27:28to me is like the immediate thought. Maybe this is just me and my numbers brain where
0:27:33I think about these things. But essentially what it comes down to is I now have to, in
0:27:37a very concrete way, say, "What is a customer worth to me?" Because I can now, in many
0:27:43ways, pay that amount of money to acquire that customer, or at least have a promising
0:27:50venue with which to acquire them. And so if I can say, "A new user is worth 50 cents
0:27:55to me," and I can come into the search ads page and pay 49 cents for that user, I'm
0:28:04coming out ahead. As soon as I can understand and wrap my arms around what like, these are
0:28:09all like the terms like the average value of each customer and those kinds of things,
0:28:14once I can do that, I can sit down and say, "Okay, I'm just going to pay, as long as
0:28:18as I break even or slightly come out ahead, I can keep putting, you know, it's the end
0:28:25of this weird cycle where I can just keep taking money out of the app and putting it
0:28:28in to a point, and maybe the value of my customers will go down at a certain point as you do
0:28:33that.
0:28:34Like, maybe there's a dilution effect, but overall it certainly is a very intriguing
0:28:38way, and maybe it's a good thing for us as app developers to be forced to think of our
0:28:44of our apps in a more tangible business sense in that way.
0:28:48That it isn't this kind of vague, crafty thing
0:28:51that I'm sort of like, I don't really know the value of,
0:28:54it's kind of like, I make this stuff
0:28:56and I put it out in the world.
0:28:57It's like, no, I can sit down and say,
0:28:59I get this much revenue from this many users,
0:29:01that means each user is worth this much to me,
0:29:04so I can pay up to this amount to acquire new ones.
0:29:07And that's maybe a good thing for us to have to think about.
0:29:10- And I think it can help newcomers,
0:29:12like everyone's a little bit worried,
0:29:13what's this gonna do to the little guys,
0:29:15I think this will actually help newcomers
0:29:18give them an option that if they wouldn't otherwise
0:29:20be visible for a search query,
0:29:22give them a way to get in there.
0:29:24You know, like that, I think this actually
0:29:26could be really good if done right.
0:29:28And it looks pretty promising so far, so we'll have to see.
0:29:31All right, and finally we wanted to very briefly talk
0:29:33about the app review times being formally acknowledged.
0:29:37You know, we said that this would be great
0:29:40if this sticks around, and one of the ways
0:29:42to make sure it'll stick around is if Apple formally acknowledges it in public, and they
0:29:46did. So, Fast App Review is probably sticking around, and that's great. Thank you for listening
0:29:52everybody, thanks to Braintree for sponsoring, and we'll talk to you all next week. Bye.