Google is trying to help its Google Play store clients by making changes which show the customers which of the apps they want to download contains advertisements. The new label will start appearing on the existing designation where in-app purchases indications for an app are put.
The change will likely impact existing developers who rely on ads to give them income since the new feature helps customers in avoiding apps that may use ad-supported business models.
This new label was first reported by the Android Police, who cited a Reddit posting they had seen.
In app advertisements are one way in which developers gain revenue. Customers, old and young, are annoyed by the ads as they remove focus and attention from the entertainment. They interrupt gameplay, and sometimes an accidental click and pop-ups in the middle of usage are just too much to bear for gamers.
Thus because of all these reasons and much more, customers always try to avoid ad supported apps when they can. But figuring out which app is ad supported has not always been easy.
Google has been working towards this feature for a long time now. Last year they began to add the ad-supported apps to the category “Designated for Families” group. Apps which had to go additional review they added to another special family section of the Google Play Store.
Later again last year, Google started asking developers to notify if their apps contained ads or not, ahead of the feature they have now given out.
The news of the new label also comes at a time Google is trying to promote the higher quality apps on its app store. It recently announced a new app awards show, began vetting apps manually and assigned content ratings and family star badges.
Rival App Store from Apple has also tried to do the same. They highlight which apps have in-app purchases since 2014. They do not, however, show which apps are ad supported. The feature on Apple App Store at the moment, however, does not indicate which of the apps that the user wants to download is ad-supported, though after purchasing through in-app purchases the ads are removed from the app.
Google also had the same feature of notifying its customers which apps offered in-app purchases, though this option was mainly thought to be for parents. Parents could choose which one of the apps they wanted to buy for their kids. The act of labelling apps and calling them out as to which one contains ads is more likely about giving users the chance to get higher-quality and better apps and is less about thwarting regulators and developers.
Google confirmed that the new ad support label in Google Play store will be rolled out globally over the next two weeks.
