The App Store is Now Pay-to-Play

0:00The app store has quietly killed the single biggest advantage indie developers had. Your new app invisible, but developers have found a new trick to rank number one. It's simple. It's a little unfair, but it's going to cost you. And if you don't pay up, your app launch could fail. In this video, I'll show you the secret trick developers are using to boost their rankings on the app store, creating one of the biggest advantages of 2025, all without breaking the rules. and it has everything to do with the recent changes to the App Store algorithm and paid ads. On Monday, I launched Piano Run, an app that tricks kids into

0:37learning the piano. My aim was simple. Integrate the latest Foundation models from Apple Intelligence, get it on the App Store before iOS 26 launches, and hope it's featured as a launch title. And it did. Piano Run was featured under Apple Intelligence's our favorites list. An absolute honor. Job well done to me. My job here is now done. I can relax. Not quite. Except for the featured listing, people can't actually find my app in the App Store. When you search my app, it can't be found. Even when you search by the entire name, Piano Run Learn Piano Game, it's nowhere to be seen. So, what's going on? If you're new

1:18to indie app development, take a seat. Let me tell you about the glorious days before June 2025. The days of the new app boost. When you launched a new app, the app store would boost your listing for a week. You would get free downloads for free and it was like a big thank you from your Apple overlords. A gift for building for their app ecosystem and a reward for such hard work that you put into it. Not really. The app store was simply prioritizing your app, showing it in recommended search results for 7 days, usually in the top few spots. This makes your app easier to find and gives

1:53you initial boost in downloads, hence the name new app boost. But the fact that your app gets a bunch of downloads in the first week was probably just an unintended consequence of the way the app store algorithm actually works. Because as it turns out, the app store algorithm only actually has one job. To rank apps relevant to the user search query. To do this, the app store algorithm needs one thing. Data. Lots of data. Downloads. conversion rates, that sort of thing. And it works similar to posting a video on Tik Tok. A new video on Tik Tok will get around about 200 views and then just stop. This gives

2:30enough data to the Tik Tok algorithm to determine whether your video was a dud or a viral hit. And the same seemed to happen with apps in the app store, too. Launch your app, get a boost in initial discoverability, and after a week, the App Store assesses whether your app is a dud or a hit. But now the App Store boost is gone. And visibility of your apps in the App Store is gone, too. And

2:52we can do all the blaming in the world. Lowquality apps overflowing the app store with AI generator slop. For whatever the reason, we have a problem. The App Store needs user data to calculate where to rank your app. But the App Store reduces visibility of your new app. So there's no users actually finding it, which means there's no data for the algorithm to do its job. But it turns out the solution to this problem is a lot simpler than you think. App Store ads. I haven't been a fan of paying for ads in the past. I figured that I'll just focus on app store rankings, get listed in the top spot,

3:26and never have to worry about user acquisition costs again. I just don't know how people make any money from their app while paying for ads. To be viable, the cost per acquisition needs to be less than the amount of money that the app generates per install. If I'm paying $1.50 50 for an install and my app only generates $1 per download. Then I'm losing 50ents every time I acquire a new user through App Store ads. I could

3:52just never get it to work, so I gave up. But now things are different. We can't just rely on the App Store giving us free downloads. Not initially, anyway. We need to do some marketing to get people using our app. Some good old-fashioned user acquisition. You could push to get your app launch featured on the App Store. That's one way of doing it. You could create viral

4:14content. That's another way of doing it. Or you could do what other developers are doing right now and get the biggest unfair advantage of 2025. Pay for ads targeting your app name. I know it sounds annoying. And when I first heard about this strategy, I thought it was a bit silly. I'm an app store optimization guy. Why would I pay for ads, let alone ads, for my own app title? But the more I thought about it, the more I realized this is actually kind of genius and it seems to be working for those developers

4:44who started doing this a few months ago. What if the app store algorithm actually works the same way it always did, particularly in those first few weeks of data collection? What if it's not only waiting for data, but it's kind of expecting that data to roll in? then all future rankings are being calculated based on it. Without any downloads during this crucial first week, the algorithm might just assume your app is a dud. And that kind of makes sense to me. But before you jump onto app store ads and you start promoting your app, there's a few tips for running a campaign like this. Don't run a basic

5:20campaign here. Sure, it's easier to set up, but if you're leaving your budget to the hands of yet another algorithm, you have less control over which keywords you're targeting, and you're going to end up spending a lot of money. Instead, opt for an advanced campaign and target the exact match keyword for your app name and the app title. For my app, I'm targeting Piano Run and Piano Run Learn Piano Game. I put these in square brackets and make sure they are set to exact match. This means I'm only targeting these keywords explicitly and the algorithm won't waste my budget on keywords it thinks is relevant. And why

5:56am I actually targeting the whole app title? It's because this is the recommended search suggestion by the app store. If a user types piano run, it will show the first result, piano run learn piano game. And when you tap it, that's the actual keyword that the user is searching for. In this example, I set the maximum CPT bid to $10, but will adjust when I start to see clicks coming through. With my very limited prior experience with app store ads, I found it easier to start with a higher budget

6:25price, get the traffic, and then adjust. Otherwise, if a bid is too low, you just won't get any traffic. And this is kind of timesensitive here. So, we want the ads to be running right away. We don't want to be wasting any days here. Some developers are also taking this technique to an entirely new level. And they're also targeting the exact match keywords for all recommended search

6:46results when people type their keyword. This way, instead of paying a lot for the keyword itself, they're only paying for search results in that drop-own list. I'm running an experiment with Piano Run and will keep you updated on the progress. Basically, I'm trying to bridge that gap that was lost with the App Store boost by using App Store ads

7:08only for a week.