Apple now says that its drop in affiliate commissions from 7% to 2.5% applies only to iOS in-app purchases, not paid iOS apps or other content types
On April 24th, Apple sent an email to participants in the iTunes Affiliate Program that said: … The drastic cut in the rate on apps …
Context & Ripple Effects
Two weeks after Apple announced a blanket cut in iTunes affiliate commissions from 7% to 2.5%, it has narrowed the damage: the lower rate lands only on iOS in-app purchases, while paid iOS apps, music, movies, books, and TV keep earning 7%. The correction matters because the original announcement implied the whole app economy was repricing overnight.
The carve-out also fits a longer arc visible in the coverage: Apple keeps slicing its take rate by category and audience rather than cutting wholesale — from the News Partner Program's 15% rate for news publishers to the later removal of apps from the affiliate program entirely.
First-order effects
- Affiliate publishers who drove in-app purchase conversions see their payout drop by roughly two-thirds starting May 1, while those linking primarily to paid iOS apps and media are spared entirely.
- Sites monetizing iOS app reviews and roundups now have a direct incentive to reorient links toward paid apps and content types that still pay 7%.
Second-order effects
- Apple signals that app-related affiliate traffic is economically marginal to it — a stance that culminates in the later decision to pull apps and in-app purchases from the program altogether (macOS and iOS app links removed October 1), leaving affiliates with only music, movies, books, and TV.
- App-discovery sites and deal aggregators lose their clearest revenue line on iOS, pushing them toward ad-supported models or toward Android ecosystems where no equivalent cut has been announced.
Third-order effects
- The pattern across this coverage — affiliate cuts, publisher-specific rates like the News Partner Program, region-specific structures such as the EU's 17%/10% tiers and China's reduction to 25% — points toward Apple's single 30% App Store commission fragmenting into a matrix of category-, audience-, and jurisdiction-specific rates.
- If affiliate economics keep tracking Apple's internal view of each category's value, third-party recommendation layers around the App Store thin out, concentrating discovery inside Apple's own surfaces like App Store search.
The trend: Apple's platform take rate is being progressively carved into category- and region-specific tiers, with the affiliate program serving as an early indicator of where Apple sees margin worth defending.