The Shady Practice of Mobile App Install Ads
When former CBS Interactive exec Jason Kint tried to read this Associated Press story on his iPhone on Jan. 1, he wasn't just given an intrusive copy-blocking Candy Crush ad. He was automatically redirected to the download page for the popular mobile game in Apple's App Store.
Context & Ripple Effects
Jason Kint, a former CBS Interactive executive, ran into the pattern firsthand on Jan. 1: an intrusive copy-blocking ad laid over an Associated Press story on his iPhone, followed by an automatic redirect straight into the Candy Crush page in Apple's App Store. Digiday frames this as a class of behavior rather than one bad media buy — install ads that seize the tap instead of asking for it.
The economics behind the practice are real: Apple has just reported that customers spent more than $10 billion in the App Store in 2013, giving developers a strong incentive to buy installs aggressively — and giving ad networks room to cut corners on how those installs are delivered.
First-order effects
- Readers on publisher pages carrying these units are bounced off the article and into an App Store listing without choosing anything, costing outlets like the Associated Press the page view and the reader's attention mid-story.
- Advertisers buying installs through such formats receive downloads from hijacked sessions — low-intent users who pad install counts while contributing little to engagement or retention.
Second-order effects
- Premium publishers and their sales teams face pressure to police which ad networks touch their inventory, because one redirect-happy ad unit burns reader trust the publisher spent years building.
- Apple's App Store sits at the end of this funnel, so the store experience absorbs the backlash even though the tactic originates with third-party ad networks and the developers paying them for volume.
Third-order effects
- If install-ad economics reward interception over persuasion, the counterweight is user-side: growing demand for tools that block or neutralize mobile ads, forcing the industry toward self-regulation or platform-level intervention.
- The gap between what a publisher approves and what the ad technology actually executes — a governance hole inside the mobile ad stack — becomes the fault line that platform owners eventually have to close.
The trend: With App Store spending topping $10 billion in 2013, app-install advertising is scaling faster than the norms governing it, leaving format abuse to be checked by publishers, platforms, or fed-up users.