5Biggest Changes in iOS 6 forApp Marketers

How to update your app acquisition strategy in response to Apple’s iPhone 5 and iOS 6

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Now that the initial hype and excitement are dying down, app developers are starting to dig in: what do the new iPhone and changes to the App Store and iOS 6 really mean?

How can you take advantage?

Here are the five biggest changes you need to understand.

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In category listings and search results, the App Store has gone from showing 25 apps at a time in vertically-scrolling batches to infinite horizontal scrolling lists. Those jumps in visibility at spots 10, 25, and 50 will soon be a thing of the past.

In category listings, only the first 3 and a half apps are visible without scrolling, and in search results, only 1 app is shown at a time.

What you should do: Do whatever you can to climb the charts: space at the top is limited, and being in the first 4 results is going to be more important than ever. On the other hand, don’t worry about position 25 vs. 26: there’s no longer a magic number to look for. In addition, since fewer results are being presented, search is likely to become more important. Test your app’s performance against your most common search terms and make sure users can find you.

You’ve got new opportunities to connect with users

The emphasis on the top 25 is going to fade

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Two new features help you build a stronger connection with people using your app:

• The App Store now displays Facebook likes from user’s friends, recognizing the importance of social interactions.

• The iOS 6 Passbook features allow “location-aware offers:” tickets,

coupons, or other customized offers based on where a user is at the moment.

What you should do: Start getting creative about how to build connections. Think about how you could highlight something of immediate value to a user when they’re in a specific location, or how you can generate more “likes” on Facebook. These types of connections can help increase loyalty, encouraging users to return to your app, as well as increasing total downloads.

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It’s time to plan your transition away from UDID#3

As expected, Apple announced a replacement for UDIDs: the new Advertising Identifier. It works similarly to UDIDs, so technical adoption should be straightforward, but it allows ad attribution with fewer privacy concerns since it’s not directly tied to the hardware the way that UDIDs are.

The biggest question mark about the transition is timing. If history is a guide, user upgrades to iOS 6 should happen quickly—about 60% of iPhone users upgraded to iOS 6 in the first two weeks it was available. However, it will take time for ad networks and app publishers to update their SDKs and apps, and for users to download those updated apps, so it may be several months before the ecosystem is ready for full adoption of the new ID.

Other ad tracking changes are also included:

• The new vendor identifier provides developers with families of apps the ability to track usage across all of them, giving you opportunities for cross-selling and helping you extend existing relationships.

• The new limit ad tracking feature allows users to tell networks not to collect information that can be used to serve targeted ads.

What you should do: The most important step is simply to put a plan in place for supporting the Advertising Identifier and make sure your marketing partners/ vendors/ad tracking systems do too.

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Although it’s a detail, it’s an important one: the App Store now shows less of your title and description text and places more importance on screenshots. The opportunity to market your app through clever titles is slimmer, so you need to take advantage where you can.

Specifically, fewer characters of your title are shown in category listings, charts, and top ranks—but those limits aren’t the same in all areas, and they vary with the width of your text, so you’ll have to check exactly what displays in each area of the App Store.

And search results now show much bigger screenshots and make scrolling through multiple shots easy, giving you a great opportunity to promote your app if you’re at the top of the results—but making it harder for apps that are further down in the results.

What you should do: Make sure you put serious thought and effort into your icons, titles, descriptions, and screenshots. Include keywords that can help with search optimization. And check how your app name appears—try to keep it short enough so it’s fully displayed on all important screens, and if you can’t, at least make sure the truncated version is clear and catchy.

Another App Store detail to check: privacy policy links for your iTunes Connect page now work in iOS 6, so make sure your privacy policy link is up to date.

App store changes emphasize shorter titles, bigger screenshots

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Historical data shows us that new Apple devices lead to increased app downloads: Fiksu tracked a 29% increase in volume following the release of the 4S last year, and that spike in volume led to a 10% decrease in the cost of obtaining a loyal user. With 5 million iPhone 5s sold on the first weekend, we expect similar numbers this year. New device users are also more likely to turn into long-term, loyal users of your app.

The increased volume and decreased user acquisition costs are likely to continue until the holiday push begins in earnest. Costs are then likely to rise with increased holiday spending before they fall back down in January.

In addition, the new phone is faster and has a bigger screen, providing more real estate for creative and better support for rich media—but you’ll have to wait for ad networks to expand their support for new sizes before you can take advantage of them.

What you should do:Dive in now! Expand or launch mobile advertising programs before holiday campaigns kick in to get your app in front of those new users. And no matter what your ultimate holiday plans are, don’t forget about Q1 budget—there’ll be another significant opportunity to capture new users after the holidays pass.

The iPhone 5 launch creates a huge opportunity for advertisers

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