First-order effects

• Developers who land an App of the Day or Game of the Day slot see download volumes jump by triple-digit percentages overnight, making a single editorial pick worth more than most paid user-acquisition campaigns.
• Apple's App Store editorial team is now wielding one of the most concentrated distribution levers in the app economy — a curated slot that moves numbers no keyword bid can match.

Second-order effects

• App marketers and ASO firms have a new target beyond search rankings: getting featured, which shifts spend and effort toward pitch-worthy design, exclusives, and timely updates that appeal to Apple's editors.
• As browse discovery grows — Sensor Tower later put it above 15% of downloads versus roughly 10% before the redesign — the search-optimization playbook that dominated App Store marketing loses relative weight.

Third-order effects

• If curation keeps outperforming search as a discovery engine, Apple's editorial choices become a de facto gatekeeping layer over which apps reach scale — concentrating influence in a small team at Apple rather than in open ranking algorithms.
• The pattern points toward app stores competing on merchandising quality the way retail does, with Google Play under pressure to match Apple's editorial apparatus as developers chase whichever store's features deliver lifts like these.