Apple plans to expand ads to the App Store's main Today tab and the “You Might Also Like” section of app listings globally on October 25, except for China
In an email to developers this week, Apple announced that app-related ads will begin appearing in the App Store's main Today tab and in a …
Context & Ripple Effects
This rollout extends a decade-long march of App Store ad inventory: Apple started with Search Ads in 2016, added Search tab campaigns promoting apps next to suggested results in 2021, and now moves ads onto editorial surfaces — the main Today tab and the 'You Might Also Like' slot inside product pages — reaching users before they ever run a search.
The timing matters because these are discovery surfaces, not query results: any developer's listing can host a rival's ad. That risk materialized almost immediately, when prominent developers found gambling ads running in their own app listings within days of launch.
First-order effects
- Developers lose exclusive control of their product pages and the Today tab's editorial space — a competitor can now buy placement directly beneath or beside their listing, turning organic discovery into auctioned inventory.
- Apple opens two of its highest-traffic App Store surfaces to bidders worldwide (minus China), immediately expanding its advertising sellable inventory across hundreds of millions of weekly store visits.
Second-order effects
- The gambling-ad backlash forced Apple to pause gambling and several other ad categories on product pages just two days after launch — meaning category-level moderation becomes a permanent operating cost of every new ad surface it opens.
- Developers who never intended to buy ads face pressure to bid defensively to keep rivals off their own listings, shifting App Store marketing budgets toward brand-term defense rather than pure user acquisition.
Third-order effects
- Apple has since committed to expanding ads further into search results in 2026, confirming the structural direction: the App Store is being repositioned from a curated storefront into an ads-driven marketplace where visibility is increasingly purchased.
- The China exclusion signals that ad-surface rollouts will be gated market-by-market on regulatory grounds, making App Store monetization geography-dependent as scrutiny of platform practices grows.
The trend: Apple is systematically converting every App Store surface into paid inventory, with developer backlash over ad quality acting as the brake on how fast each new placement ships.