Getting your app featured by the App Store is obviously a terrific achievement—but just how much does it matter? Does it matter more in different countries? How long does the boost last, and is this effect getting stronger over time? Analytics firm App Annie has studied the issue of featured apps in Apple’s App Store and provided some useful data for marketers. App Annie looked at free iPhone apps featured between June 2013 through March 2016 in five countries: Brazil, Japan, South Korea, the UK and the US.
Let’s get one thing clear: Apple’s App Store is still the best place to make money from mobile games, despite the slowing of iPhone sales in the last quarter. Apple’s App Store accounted for 58 percent of global app revenue in 2015 compared to 36 percent for Google Play Store, according to IDC. That’s despite the fact that Apple only accounts for 15 percent of global app installs. The conclusion is easy: iPhone owners spend more money than Android owners. So much so that Apple’s share of app revenue rose 36 percent in 2015 despite the fact that its share of total app installs for the same period fell 8 percent.
However, it is important to note that IDC’s figures don’t include advertising, which is a major source of revenue that’s dominated by Facebook and Google. One other thing to note is that there are many non-Google Android app stores (because Google hasn’t been operating in China) which account for the remainder of the app revenue.
For marketers looking to get their share of iOS app revenue, becoming a featured app in the App Store is an obvious goal. As you would expect, being a featured app had a positive effect on apps, but the effect on games was some 4x greater. The effect was a 140 percent increase in the number of game downloads during the period when the game was featured. The effect of being featured is not as great as it once was, particularly for non-game apps. Back in 2013, non-game apps could expect an 80 percent boost in downloads, but has dropped down to 25 percent.
Still, for marketers of mobile games, getting your game featured on the App Store is seen as a win that’s more important than any other third-party endorsement. But getting featured is not an easy task. Larger publishers make establishing a good relationship with the App Store staff a priority, but that takes time and effort. Apple always has the final say on what’s featured, and often requires major changes to an app before it will even be considered. A great deal of effort can go into to trying to get your app featured, but without success. Marketers have to decide if that time would be better spent on activities that have a greater chance of bearing fruit.
Another thing marketers need to consider is that the effect varies between countries. In South Korea, getting featured in the App Store was a huge boost, providing almost 500 percent more downloads. By contrast, the boost in the US was less than 100 percent. Still a great lift, but certainly nowhere in South Korea’s league. Why is the effect so large in South Korea? App Annie attributes that to the relative newness of much of the iPhone audience in South Korea, which has seen iPhone market share jump since the introduction of the iPhone 6, and new owners are always more likely to download apps.
Certainly, it’s not a coincidence that major publishers keep getting their apps featured on the App Store. While the games from the top publishers are almost always well-polished, you can bet that the publishers have more resources to throw at the task of getting a game featured. Electronic Arts is highly successful at this, being the leading company featured in Brazil, South Korea, the UK, and the US—and number 2 in Japan. Getting your game featured in the Main Banner on the front page of the App Store is an even better feature position, and even harder to achieve. Once again, Electronic Arts has had great success with this, and Apple often uses it to feature its own apps.
The boost provided by feature placement in the App Store is something that a savvy marketer will build upon, using the increased user base to keep up organic install momentum. Advertising around featured placement is an important strategy. “Gameloft is unique by the diversity of games that it brings to the App Store. All our games have very high production values for each and every specific audience we target, enabling us to broaden the ecosystem. When Apple comes to the same conclusion and brings strong featuring support, there is often an exponential effect. We aim to advertise our games at the same time as featuring.” said Baudouin Corman, GM Americas at Gameloft.
Being a featured app is not sufficient in itself, but it sure helps your marketing. “Strong featuring doesn’t necessarily ensure the success of a title, but it goes a long way in launching and sustaining a successful app. We believe that great games and great brands are drivers of app store featuring, and we work closely with app store managers to showcase the products and features that their audiences want,” said Chris Heatherly, SVP and GM at Disney Interactive Games.
