作者：Dean Takahashi

对于刚刚发行了一款iOS应用的小型开发者来说，能否攀升到苹果App Store最高排行榜前列，直接决定自己究竟能实现百万美元收益还是继续过寒酸日子。

所以便会出现一些程序员欺骗系统的行为，而苹果也尝试着去阻止这种行为。

但是在苹果政策与利用自动程序或廉价中国劳动力去抬升应用排名的“作弊者”进行斗争的同时，那些无辜的初创企业开始发现自己不仅被远远阻隔在市场之外，同时还必须面对高风险的盈利环境。

所以一些“牺牲者”便开始斥责苹果的秘密政策。

“我们很难去判断谁的行为符合道德标准，”一位知情人士透露道。“我们也很难相信巨头公司会不去操纵他们的排名以及苹果能够公平对待所有人。”

问题在于那些第三方市场营销公司的职责就是将一些不知名的应用推向苹果榜单前列。有时候他们会采用一些无耻的市场操纵方法，如“bot farms”，“软件僵尸工具”或中国的“水军（游戏邦注：受雇于网络公关公司以帮助客户回帖造势）”——而这些方法都会让苹果工作人员抓狂不已。今年2月苹果便制裁了一些使用软件僵尸工具以及水军去提高应用总体下载量（进而推动游戏在App Store免费游戏排行榜中攀升到较高位置）的市场营销公司。

苹果以操纵排行榜之名要求香港手机游戏开发商Animoca从App Store中撤下应用。同时我们也发现一家利用Gtekna服务的开发商出现了异常行为，其应用突然窜升到排行榜前25名但随之又迅速跌落，并且70%的下载用户都未曾打开过游戏。

我们没有理由责怪苹果想要保持App Store排名纯洁性的想法，但在苹果的这种扫荡下，有些采用合法营销手段的应用也无故受到牵连。市场上也存在一些无意破坏苹果市场规则但却雇佣了操纵者的开发商。这些开发商会发现自己的应用被列入黑名单，并且当他们与苹果协商并希望重返App Store时，他们会发现一切都是徒劳无功。

目前我们还不清楚有多少应用因为这项苹果禁令遭受损失，但据应用搜索公司Xyologic所称，苹果在某个月内以多种原因撤下了5千款应用。而开发者也是在整个App Store下载量出现显著下滑时才开始担忧。

Xyologic首席执行官Matthäus Krzykowski表示，从一月份以来美国App Store的下载量便下降了25%。而这一下降应该与苹果封杀刷排名机制以及打击“奖励”安装机制息息相关。另一家应用市场营销公司Fiksu报告也显示了App Store下载量下降的趋势。

一家匿名游戏开发公司的经理说道：“我们的应用遭到了拒绝但是我们却不知道具体原因。如果我们能够与苹果进行沟通并搞清楚其根本要求我想情况应该会有所好转吧。似乎每个人都很担心这一点，但是我们却未能获得足够的信息。所以人们便都认为苹果的做法具有倾向性。”

经理还说道大多数开发者都清楚操纵策略，但是他们却只愿私下谈论相关话题。他表示越来越多开发者担心当更多应用公司开始使用市场营销技能时，整个生态圈中的游戏公司就会为了能够与对手相抗衡而被迫使用相同的手段。

虽然所有受到影响的公司（游戏邦注：包括开发商，广告网络公司，应用市场营销公司以及手机基础设施公司）的首席执行官们都为苹果市场营销制裁举措担忧不已，但是却没有人愿意站出来告诉苹果此法不妥。

FreeAppADay首席执行官Joe Bayen表示，自从1月份以来下载量就开始出现下滑，而应用开发者和发行商便不得不加大力度推动自家商品的营销。Bayen表示：“在过去我们可能只需要使用三到四种市场营销服务去推广一款应用。但是现在却需要使用40多种的市场营销服务。”

直到2月6日苹果才正式申明对这次制裁行动的观点：“当你创造了一款出色的应用，你便希望所有人能够注意到它。但是当你开始推销这一应用时，你不可使用宣传或保证可将应用推上App Store榜单前列的服务。

即使你未亲自操纵App Store排名或用户评价情况，但是使用类似服务也将影响你的苹果开发者资格。”

2月份，当苹果展开了制裁活动后，AppMagenta等第三方市场营销服务便开始转入“地下策略”。而Gtekna（位于美国帕洛阿尔托市的小型应用市场营销公司，只拥有2名成员）却并非如此。比起转战地下，Gtekna选

择改变其网站上的说辞，即不再为开发者提供攀上App Store排行榜顶端的服务。

但Gtekna网站仍自豪地宣称将帮助开发者“提高应用的曝光率并扩大销量！”同时它也注明了自己并未使用任何刷排名程序。

Gtekna有关负责人表示，人们会使用刷排名应用推广策略的关键在于，合法的营销策略总是屈服于阴暗的市场操纵方法。我们将在之后阐述这一故事。但首先我们需要研究当苹果开始打击可疑的应用市场营销者时整个市场会发生何种变化。

落入“法网”

今年早期时候，苹果因为掌握了某些市场营销者通过自动电脑系统和“水军”操纵App Store最高排行榜的证据而发起了制裁第三方市场营销服务的活动。市场营销者主要使用这些工具去下载其客户的iOS应用，从而通过人工操纵去提升该应用在App Store中的排名。

许多应用市场营销服务使用像上述提到的一些防御措施，但是苹果最终取缔了那些刷排名的应用，正如谷歌在处理那些尝试着操纵搜索引擎排名而获利的网站一样。苹果无法直接制裁作为罪魁祸首的市场营销公司，

它只能惩罚这些操纵者的客户，即使用了这种可疑市场营销服务的应用开发者。

苹果并未详细解释制裁政策，所以不仅开发者不解为何自己的应用会被踢出App Store，甚至整个开发者生态圈都对苹果的市场营销指南产生了疑惑。

Nexon America（游戏邦注：亚洲最大的在线游戏发行商之一）总裁Daniel Kim表示：“我的一个朋友拥有一家非常成功的手机应用开发公司，旗下有数百款游戏出现在App Store中。但是在某一天他却因为与错误的市场营销公司合作而导致产品被撤下App Store。因为我的朋友对此并不知情，所以他们便使用了这些违规程序去提升游戏在排行榜中的位次。但是极端讽刺的是在与该公司合作之前他们的应用已经在排行榜单前列了。而苹果却不管这种情况只是说‘反正你们就是做了。’所以他们的应用完全被撤出了App Store。过去他们一年可以获得2400万次下载量，但是现在却对苹果的此番决策无计可施。”

苹果拒绝对此发表评论。而他们的这种沉默更是让那些觉得自己遭受了不公正待遇的开发者郁闷不已。到现在我们还不清楚到底有多少开发者遭到警告或撤离，因为苹果禁止他们谈论相关信息。

是否这些应用都是受到非法市场营销策略所推动？我们并无从取证，因为开发者们均表示苹果未曾清楚表明镇压动机。

善恶之间的界限

合法的市场营销公司包括Tapjoy，PlayHaven，Flurry，Chartboost，AdParlor，Iddiction以及FreeAppADay。他们都是使用应用搜索方法去帮助用户推广旗下应用——如吸引玩家与好友分享应用或说服他们尝试新应用等。

例如，Tapjoy便将新应用的广告安插在现有应用中。Chartboots鼓励开发者通过交叉推广以及直接合作方式去推销其它开发者的应用。而FreeAppADay便如其名实行一天免费模式进行应用推广。而使用这种方法的开发者也希望通过这种限时降价策略去获取更大的用户基础。

对于这些市场营销服务来说，它们的目标并不是操纵直接排行，而是避免越过道德界限。Tapjoy在去年便因为使用奖励安装机制（即Tapjoy向那些安装了另外一款应用的用户提供游戏内部奖励）而陷入了麻烦。

苹果认为这种奖励成为了人们安装应用的最大动机，也就是用户将不再关心自己下载了什么应用。而这种奖励安装机制已构成了对榜单前25名排行的影响。尽管如此，Tapjoy以及其它公司也仍然在执行一些非奖励机制的促销活动。并且Tapjoy也仍然能够在Android设备的Google Play市场中使用奖励安装机制。

而我们知道有一家开发商，也就是Dream Cortex的所有应用便因为违背了苹果原则的3.10条款而被撤出了App Store，该原则的相关内容是：“任何尝试在App Store中操纵或使用欺骗手法在用户评价或排行榜单上做手脚的开发商都将被撤销iOS开发者帐号。”

Dream Cortex的《Pretty Pet Salon》等应用便在1月12日被撤离了该平台。而这些应用都是由Animoca所发行。因为《Pretty Pet Salon》的下载量达到了1000万以上，所以这次制裁行动对该公司来说是个不小的打击。

而Animoca发言人Ibrahim El-Mouelhy告诉我们：“我们从未使用过任何违规程序或蓄意操纵任何活动。”他表示苹果从未公布应用删除的具体原因。Animoca多次尝试将应用再次推向iTunes App Store，甚至还咨询了法律意见，但却都未能成功。

不过说来也奇怪，遭到苹果禁止的《Pretty Pet Salon Seasons》在Pretty Pet Company的庇佑下再次出现在App Store。现在，由Oriented Games所开发的《 Pretty Pet Salon Edition》再次开始出售了。为何Animoca的努力全然无效而这些应用却能够成功回到App Store？

其实简单地来说是因为Animoca放弃了重回App Store的机会并将这个iOS项目出售给其它未受到禁令的开发者。它本来的目的是与苹果解决了这一问题并让自己那赚钱的iOS项目能够再次复苏，不过他们却在此碰壁了，所以才选择了出售这个项目。

“我们在Android和亚马逊平台就做得不错，”El-Mouelhy说道。“如果我们能够与一些相关人士进行协商，也许我们就能够再次回到苹果。”

Animoca的困境同时也凸显了那些遭受苹果制裁的小型开发者的境况。苹果明确地告知开发社区，苹果奉行用户优先原则以及驱逐市场操纵者的规定。也许苹果的这一措施不够即时，但是它将最终了驱逐所有它认为违反了政策的发行商。

但是苹果在处理应用撤离所采取的方法也并非完全公平。苹果将直接与一些知名度较高且大获成功的应用开发商和发行商进行交流，并告知他们如何遵循所有商店和开发政策——不管这些政策关注的是内容，隐私，技术还是市场营销。但是苹果却不是如此对待那些名气较低的开发商。实际上，如果你只是一名小型发行商，你便难以得到苹果明确的解释。

在报道这一事情时，我们同一些因违背苹果原则3.10条款而导致产品被撤架的开发商进行了联系，只有Animoca愿意公开分享自己的故事，但所有开发商均认为苹果未解释其应用被封杀的具体原因。

从第1800名窜升到前25名

在经历了2月份的制裁后，一些第三方应用市场营销者开始躲避这种局势，改变他们的网站营销信息但仍保持运营。就像应用市场营销商Gtekna便仍继续营运，尽管就像我们之前所说的那样，该公司改变了自己的市场营销说辞。Gtekna首席执行官Chang-Min Pak便否认了他们在业务中使用违规程序。

Pak表示他们公司只是在各种网站中使用条幅广告推广应用。并且在他们的合同中Gtekna也承诺“将不会使用任何具有攻击性的市场营销方法，例如会给应用和客户遭致坏名声的垃圾邮件等手段。”

尽管Pak表示Gtekna从未使用违规程序，但是他也认为那些竞争者便是依靠于这种自动程序获得优势。的确，其它一些应用市场营销服务机构便公开了那些会惹恼苹果的举措。如当你访问iSales Boost时你将会注意到类似于“生成评价”等语言。AppMagenta现在则仅表示提供“面向iPhone和iPad应用的推广服务，”而之前它却承诺能够将应用推向排行榜的前25名。

但是Gtekna的陈述并不完全真实。Gtekna早前的一名客户便证实Gtekna在去年的合同协议中保证能够将应用推向App Store免费应用排行榜前列。如果应用不能在5天内进入榜单前列，客户便可以获得全额退款。

而该客户的应用便在Gtekna的帮助下从第1800名迅速窜升到苹果免费应用榜单中的前25名。在短短的几天内这一应用便获得了5万至10万的新用户。

但是在推广结束后该应用下载量也迅速下滑。如此看来该应用的人气大部分都是伪造的：据Flurry报告显示，超过70%的新用户都未曾打开过应用。所以该客户便认为Gtekna肯定是使用了违规程序或利用水军进行应用推广。

我们并不能因Flurry数据就判断该公司操纵应用排名。因为通常情况下用户都会先将应用下载到自己的电脑上并在数日后才将其转移到自己的设备中。而Gtekna的Pak也表示“在推广活动后排名出现下滑也是正常的事，除非该应用拥有足够的人气以获得巨大的下载量从而维持排名位置。”

“在应用挤进前25名的榜单后我们便停止了推广活动，”Pak说道“大多数情况下经过推广的应用排名都会上升到15名至17名左右。我们的客户便是通过发送礼物卡给用户去鼓励他们点击广告横幅。我们从一些开发者得知大约60%至70%的人会打开新下载的游戏应用，而对于非游戏应用的这一数据则是45%。”

这一经验对于那些使用Gtekna服务的开发者非常有帮助：没有什么比高品质的内容更加重要——真正优秀的应用便能够通过用户的口口相传提高下载量。应用市场营销只能够暂时提高下载量，而如果一款应用真正优秀，它便能够始终保持在前25名以内。

如果继续投入成本营销又会怎样？

社交/手机游戏开发商Making Fun联合创始人Lee Crawford表示：“这种情况下我们应该豁出去想。你需要思考一个问题，即我是否应该原地不动或者应该投入市场营销成本而保持前25名位置？”

《 Pretty Pet Salon》原发行商Animoca便使用了Gtekna市场营销服务，但是Gtekna却只是Animoca众多选择中的一个。Pak表示他不清楚为何Animoca遭到了禁止。“我从未听客户提起这件事，”Pak说道“若只是因为客户使用了我们的服务便被苹果撤销应用，那是毫无根据的。我们没有遇到用户被苹果撤除开发者帐号或删除应用的情况。”确实，已有上千家开发商使用过Gtekna的服务，但许多大小开发商却未遭遇相同的结果，因此Animoca应用为何遭禁确实令人纳闷。

Gtekna的辩护

Pak表示Gtekna从未使用“bot farms”以及“水军”这些策略。

Pak称公司至少收费8000美元，通过条幅广告推广应用。这种市场营销结果是每天能为客户带来大约2万次下载量，并且投入于这种营销活动的时间也各不相同。

有些开发者怀疑Gtekna在使用bot farm等勾当。但是却没人能够提供可靠的证据，因为使用bot farm与使用正当广告所促成的结果极端相似，也就是都会提升应用在排行榜中的名次。

为了替自己的正当业务辩护，Pak并未多加说明自己的情况，只是声称他们拥有1万多开发商客户，但不便列举出这些客户的名字。他还表示Gtekna每天会展开许多广告活动但拒绝透露具体营销措施，也没有分享任何业务合作伙伴的信息。

尽管Pak否认公司曾使用bot farms，但我们并不难在在其它市场中找到这种自动下载代理机构。

PlayHaven首席执行官Andy Yang指出：“很多farms内容都具有中毒关联性。有些开发者将尝试摆脱它，但是有些开发者却做不到。而一个好消息便是如果苹果能够制裁这些机制，那么开发者的市场营销成本便不会落到bot farms手中了。”

加拿大维多利亚大学的一名计算机科学学生Chen Cheng便是一名水军，他通过在一些中国网站上发帖而获得酬劳。他表示自己与“同行”们便是利用在这一过程中学到的知识去编写软件而检测bots的存在。

Cheng还表示中国的一些市场营销公司会使用无数苹果ID（伪造苹果帐号）去帮助开发商提高应用下载量。Cheng还说道，市场营销公司同样也会使用代理服务去改变互联网协议地址而阻止苹果发觉水军。

“苹果已经明确了对于这种恶意操纵的强硬态度，所以第三方市场营销公司便转向雇佣水军去下载并编写应用评价——就像一般用户所做的那样。因为通过这种方法苹果便很难察觉到违规行为。同时该公司还提到进入前10或前3名的尝试太过危险，很容易被苹果发觉端倪，而挤进前30至前50便不成问题。”

出于对隐私的保护，苹果删除了用户唯一识别码（游戏邦注：UDID，即每个设备只有一个标识符，与设备硬件相关，无法更改）的设定。从3月末，苹果便开始抵制使用UDID代码的应用，并暗示将完全淘汰UDID。当苹果为了保护隐私而越加远离UDID，他们也更难找到那些可用于鉴定市场操纵的分析数据。

“为了发现任何隐藏行为，我们需要使用大量的数据，”Cheng说道“例如我们可以收集特定苹果ID的评价并以此分析用户下载和评价趋势。整合一些应用的名称你便会注意到某些特定的ID总会频繁地出现在一些较知名的应用中。随后这些ID便会被认为是恶意的ID。而如果这些恶意ID同时出现在一款新应用中，那么这个新应用便有可能是利用付费评论者进行宣传。”

一位匿名开发者认为bots操纵者便是使用以下策略推进自动下载：“他们通过使用软件工具开发包将一些代码添加到应用中，盗用了用户的UDID。这些代码将变成是协助（新）应用提高下载量的bot，或至少能够以有效的UDID自动下载应用。”

Cheng还补充道，中国市场营销者可能会利用那些被盗（“用户可能不会注意到额外的应用”）或生成bot活动的iTunes帐号的数据库。

Cheng说道：“通过一些用于指示下载哪些应用程序的bot的中央控制，这些帐号将被传送到bots中。中央控制程序将根据排行榜位置去调整安装流程以匹配广告活动。这便是他们能够长期保持应用在某个排名的重要原因。”

营销成本上升促使开发者寻找“旁门左道”

一些开发者和应用市场营销者告诉我们，苹果制裁一些合法应用市场营销技术的行为，在无意间为一些非法市场营销手段提供了生存土壤。绝望的应用开发者可能会转向一些“非法手段”，特别是在2011年第四季度，当时应用促销成本翻了三倍。

而在同一个季度，通过广告而购买新应用的用户获取成本（合法用户获取方式）再创历史新高。手机广告公司Fiksu表示，每用户获取成本从2011年5月的1.10美元提升至12月的1.81美元。就大多数应用的价格为0.99美元来看，这一数字的确非常惊人。在今年早期这一数字也因为假期性变化出现了下滑并跌至今日的每用户1.26美元。

手机广告成本也在1月，也就是节日后出现跌落，但却在2月份再次提高。由于手机社交网站Gree在该领域的大笔投入，手机广告成本也将继续朝着上升趋势而发展。

一些开发者便因为某些广告定价过高望而却步：较大的开发者能够支付高额成本于广告中，但是小型开发者却没有足够的成本。为了解决这一问题，一些开发者便转向较为便宜的第三方市场营销服务。

Ngmoco首席执行官兼日本DeNA高管Neil Young声称：“今天我们获得用户的第一种渠道是通过谷歌推广，第二种渠道是通过付费广告获得用户，而第三种渠道则是应用排名。所以这也是广告成本不断提高的一大原因。即你不得不在付费广告中投入成本。而对于众多开发者来说，通过付费广告去获得用户则是一个不小的挑战。”

尽管如此，Young也认可苹果制裁bots和水军的正确性，并表示不会同情那些故意采取欺骗方法的开发者。

Young相信苹果收购应用程序搜索引擎Chomp的做法也彰显它想解决操纵应用排名问题的决心。

除此之外，Young表示Ngmoco也希望能够通过自己的Mobage社交游戏平台去缓解用户获取问题。如果有够多的用户使用Mobage去分享游戏，那么开发者便无需投入更多成本去获取用户了。在过去一周苹果便通过发布iOS 6去缓解这一问题，即让用户能够在App Store中为自己喜欢的应用打上“赞”标签而进一步在Facebook上推广这些应用。

Gree International首席执行官Naoki Aoyagi便表示在苹果宣布制裁行动后，他们自身的手机社交游戏平台变得越来越受欢迎。总之，Aoyagi认为开发者越来越慑于使用各种非法渠道，并将重新回到合法平台去推广游戏。Aoyagi说道：“开发者们知道人为操纵排名不再有效。而苹果的制裁举措也将让整个市场变得更加有序。”

手机游戏发行商Pocket Gems首席运营官Ben Liu也表示，“在这点上我们的想法是与苹果相一致的。只有真正有趣的应用才能出现在排行榜名列前茅。”（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Inside Apple’s Crackdown On App Ranking Manipulation

Dean Takahashi

For a small developer who’s just released an iOS app, a position near the top of Apple’s App Store rankings could mean the difference between a million dollars in revenue and Top Ramen for dinner.

So it’s no surprise that some coders try to cheat the system—and that Apple tries to stop it.

But in the battle between Apple’s police and the cheaters who employ automated bots or cheap Chinese labor to boost their rankings, some innocent startups are finding themselves banned from the marketplace—collateral damage in a high-stakes war with real money on the line.

Now a few of the castoffs are raising their voices to complain about Apple’s secretive policies.

“It’s hard to tell who is doing this ethically and who isn’t,” said one source familiar with the cheaters who asked to remain anonymous. “It’s hard to believe the big guys aren’t manipulating their ranks and that Apple is treating everybody fairly here.”

At issue is the cottage industry of third-party marketing firms that promise to propel unknown apps from obscurity to the top of Apple’s ranking charts. Sometimes their methods include brazen market manipulation using so-called “bot farms,” “software bots,” or human “water armies” in China—a practice that’s incurred the wrath of Apple’s policy cops in Cupertino, Calif. This February, Apple cracked down on a number of dubious marketing firms that use software bots and armies of human users to download apps en masse, propelling the titles to high-profile positioning within the App Store’s “Top Free” rankings chart.

Apple banned at least one major developer, Animoca (which published apps from Dream Cortex; read our separate report on Animoca being banned), from putting apps on the App Store because of alleged rankings manipulation. And we found that one app developer that used the marketer Gtekna saw unusual behavior; its app shot to the top 25 but then dropped like a rock, and 70 percent of the downloads were never opened.

One can’t blame Apple for trying to keep its App Store rankings pure, but some legitimately marketed apps might be getting swept up in Apple’s dragnet as the company attempts to remove software from those who would game the system. Similarly, some developers have pure intentions but have naively hired market manipulators. These developers are finding their apps blacklisted—and when they attempt to work with Apple on App Store reinstatement, their efforts are ignored. (Apple declined repeated attempts to talk to us for this story).

It isn’t clear how many apps have been affected by the bans, but in any given month, Apple takes down 5,000 apps for a variety of reasons, according to app search firm Xyologic. The developers’ concerns came at a time when overall App Store downloads were notably decreasing. Matth?us Krzykowski, the chief executive of Xyologic, said that the volume of downloads on the U.S. App Store has fallen 25 percent since January. The decrease, he says, can in part be attributed to Apple’s crackdown on bots and its decision to combat “incentivized” installs (which we’ll explain below). Fiksu, another app marketing firm, reports a similar drop in downloads on the App Store.

“We had an app rejected and we didn’t know why,” said an executive at a seasoned game development company who requested anonymity. “It would be much better if we had clear communication from Apple about what the guidelines really are. It seems like everyone is worried about this, but the information isn’t evenly circulated. People think that Apple plays favorites.”

The executive said most developers know about the manipulation tactics but will only talk about them in private. He said there’s a growing fear in the developer community that as more and more app companies use underhanded marketing techniques, the greater ecosystem will be forced to do so as well to keep up with rivals.

The words of the gaming company executive were echoed during a frank, closed-door discussion on app marketing at a recent mobile conference. Chief executives of affected companies—developers, ad networks, app marketers, and mobile infrastructure companies—all said that they were worried about Apple’s handling of the marketing crackdown, but nobody wanted to stand up and tell Apple what was wrong.

Since the download numbers have dropped since January, app developers and publishers have had to get more aggressive about marketing, said Joe Bayen, the chief executive of FreeAppADay, which uses Apple-approved methods to help market apps. “In the past, you might have only needed only three or four marketing services to spread an app,” Bayen said. “Now you might need to use 40 of them.”

Apple hasn’t said a lot about the crackdown beyond this Feb. 6 statement: “Once you build a great app, you want everyone to know about it. However, when you promote your app, you should avoid using services that advertise or guarantee top placement in App Store charts. Even if you are not personally engaged in manipulating App Store chart rankings or user reviews, employing services that do so on your behalf may result in the loss of your Apple Developer Program membership.”

In February, after the Apple crackdown, some third-party marketing services such as AppMagenta went into hiding. This wasn’t the case with Gtekna, a small app marketing firm in Palo Alto, Calif., with only two employees. Rather than going underground, Gtekna changed the wording on its website so that it no longer promised to work App Store magic for developers.

Indeed, Gtekna’s web site no longer guarantees top 25 placement, but it proudly proclaims it can “Increase visibility and maximize sales!” It also notes somewhat cryptically that it does not use “bots.”

Gtekna’s top executive was willing to talk with us about the gray areas of rankings-driven app promotion—the points at which solid marketing tactics give way to shady market manipulation. We’ll share his story shortly. But let’s first delve into what happened when Apple started fighting back against shady app marketers.

Getting caught in the dragnet

Earlier this year, Apple took broad action against third-party marketing services firms because evidence showed some marketers were manipulating the App Store’s top rankings using automated computer systems—that is, software bots—as well as armies of human users. The marketers used these tools to download their clients’ iOS apps en masse, artificially inflating Apple’s store rankings.

Many app marketing services use defensible, above-board practices, but Apple eventually cracks down on those that reek of rankings manipulation, much as Google deals with websites that try to manipulate search engine rankings for profit. Apple can’t directly control seedy marketing firms, so it chases down those manipulators’ customers—the app developers who either knowingly or unwittingly purchased the dubious marketing services.

Apple doesn’t explain its take-down policies in detail, so not only are some developers confused by why their apps were kicked out of the App Store, but the whole developer ecosystem is also left with unclear marketing guidelines.

“A friend of mine had a pretty successful mobile app development company with hundreds of titles in the App Store,” said Daniel Kim, the president of Nexon America, one of the biggest publishers of online games in Asia. “He just got cut off one day because he used the wrong marketing company. Without his knowledge, this company had used bots to bring some of their titles up on the rankings. Ironically, they were already there before they hired this company. But [Apple] just basically said, ‘You’re done.’ They were completely cut off. They were running like 24 million [downloads] a year, and there is no appeal process. It’s pretty absolute.”

Apple declined to comment for this story. And, in fact, its overall silence regarding takedown policies vexes developers who feel they’ve been treated unfairly. It isn’t clear just how many app developers have been warned or cut off, because Apple prohibits them from talking about its communications.

Were all these apps promoted by nefarious marketing practices? It’s impossible to tell, because Apple doesn’t clearly communicate its motivations to those affected, developers say.

The line between good and evil

Some marketing practices entail nothing more objectionable than time-tested, smart promotion. Legitimate marketing companies include the likes of Tapjoy, PlayHaven, Flurry, Chartboost, AdParlor, Iddiction, and FreeAppADay. They all help clients with the tough challenges of app discovery — compelling users to share apps with friends and convincing users to try something new.

Tapjoy, for example, places ads for new apps inside of established apps. Chartboost incentivizes developers to promote the apps of other developers through a variety of cross-promotions and direct deals. And FreeAppADay is exactly what it sounds like: a website that promotes apps that free for just one day. Developers who join are willing to reduce their prices to zero (if only briefly) to enjoy the fruits of a larger user base.

For all these marketing services, direct chart manipulation is not the object, but ethical boundaries can be crossed. Tapjoy got into trouble last year after it started making a lot of money through incentivized installs — in effect, Tapjoy gave in-game rewards to users who installed another app.

Apple decided the rewards were such a big motivator that people were installing apps that they had no interest in using. And the impact of incentivized installs in the market was big enough to cause a distortion in the top 25 rankings. Nonetheless, Tapjoy (and others) still do a lot of business using nonincentivized cross promotions. What’s more, Tapjoy can still do its incentivized install promotions in Google Play market on Android devices.

We know at least one developer, Dream Cortex, had all of its apps removed from the App Store for violating Apple’s guideline 3.10, which states, “Developers who attempt to manipulate or cheat the user reviews or chart ranking in the App Store with fake or paid reviews, or any other inappropriate methods, will be removed from the iOS Developer Program.”

Pretty Pet Salon and related apps from Dream Cortex were removed on Jan. 12 for the policy violation. The software was published by Hong Kong–based Animoca, a division of incubator Outblaze Ventures. An Apple spokesman confirmed to us that Animoca’s apps were banned because they violated guideline 3.10. Pretty Pet Salon downloads were above 10 million, so the app’s removal wasn’t a trivial takedown.

Ibrahim El-Mouelhy, a spokesman for Animoca, told us, “We have never used bots or intentionally engaged in any manipulation activities.” He said Apple never provided specific reasons for the app removals. Animoca tried various times to get its apps restored, and even consulted legal advice, but it has not succeeded in getting back into the Apple iTunes App Store.

Oddly enough, a version of the game that Apple banned, Pretty Pet Salon Seasons, is now under the auspices of Pretty Pet Company and has reappeared in the App Store. Pretty Pet Salon Edition, now under the development of Oriented Games, is also back on sale.

So how did these apps win back entry when Animoca’s efforts for reinstatement were futile?

Simple: Animoca gave up on being reinstated and instead sold off its iOS business to another developer that wasn’t banned. Its preference was to work it out with Apple so that it could keep its lucrative iOS business alive, but it met a stone wall and had to sell.

“We are doing very well on Android and Amazon,” El-Mouelhy said. “We hope to be able to get back on Apple, if we have a conversation with the right person.”

The plight of Animoca underscores the frustration of small developers caught up in Apple’s crackdown. Apple has (quite rightly) messaged to the developer community that the consumer comes first, and market manipulators will be ousted from the ecosystem. Apple may not act quickly, but it will eventually chase down app publishers it thinks have violated policy.

But the manner in which Apple deals with store removals retains a great deal of inequity. Apple will communicate directly with the highest-profile and most successful app developers and publishers so that they understand how to comply with all store and development policies, whether those policies concern content, privacy, technology or marketing. But Apple has not been so transparent to the relatively obscure developers caught up in its marketing crackdown. In effect, if you’re a small publisher, you won’t get an explanation.

While reporting this story, we spoke to several large and small developers whose apps were removed from the App Store for violating guideline 3.10. Only one — Animoca — would share its story on the record, but all felt Apple provided insufficient explanation of precisely why their apps were removed.

How to shoot from No. 1,800 to the top 25

After February’s crackdown, some of the other third-party app marketers turned tail and ran, changing their website marketing messages but remaining in business. Some turned down new customers. App marketer Gtekna, meanwhile, remains in business — though, as we explained above, the company has changed some of its own marketing language. Gtekna’s chief executive, Chang-Min Pak, granted us an interview, and he denied that his business was using bots.

Rather, Pak said that his company was merely paid to promote apps on a wide variety of web sites via banner ads. And in it contracts, Gtekna promised that it “will not use any offensive marketing methods such as spamming which may create a negative reputation to the application and the customer,” Pak said.

While Pak says Gtekna never used bots, he thinks rivals who’ve undercut him on pricing have resorted to these automated techniques. And, indeed, at least one other app marketing service openly describes practices that would provoke Apple’s wrath. Visit iSales Boost and you’ll find language that references “review generation.” AppMagenta now says it offers “promotion services for iPhone and iPad apps,” but it once guaranteed placement in the top 25.

But Gtekna’s picture isn’t entirely clear. One of Gtekna’s former customers — who spoke only on condition of anonymity — confirmed that a Gtekna contract agreement from last year guaranteed placement in the Top Free list in Apple’s store. If the app didn’t hit the top ranks within five days, the customer could cancel the promotion for a full refund.

When the app was promoted with Gtekna’s help last year, it shot from number 1,800 to the top 25 in Apple’s top free apps list. Within a couple of days, the app got between 50,000 to 100,000 new users.

But after the promotion stopped, the app dropped like a rock. Adding insult to injury, it appeared the app’s popularity was mostly manufactured: According to Flurry, an independent analytics provider, more than 70 percent of all the new users never even opened the app. Our anonymous developer concluded that Gtekna had used either bots or masses of humans who were paid small amounts to download the app.

It’s impossible to determine if Flurry’s data speaks to market manipulation. It’s not uncommon, after all, for users to download apps to their computers and then wait days before transferring them to their devices. And for his part in the manner, Gtekna’s Pak said that it makes sense that “the ranking will fall after the campaign unless the app is so popular to get enough downloads to hold the ranking.”

“We stop a campaign 12 hours after we hit top 25,” Pak said. “In most of the cases, the ranking goes up to around 15th to 17th. Our partners give away gift cards to their members by drawing to encourage the members to click ad banners. For game apps, we’re told from a few developers that about 60 percent to 70 percent of people open the apps, and for nongame apps, we’re told that 35 percent to 45 percent are opened.”

The experience was very instructive to the developer that used Gtekna: It showed that there’s no substitute for quality content — a great app will generate its own downloads via human word-of-mouth. App marketing can provide a temporary boost, but an app will only stay in the top 25 if it’s really good.

Or if the developer continues to pay for marketing.

“You need muzzle velocity out of the chute,” said Lee Crawford, a critic of bot-driven marketing and a cofounder of social and mobile game developer Making Fun. “The question is, do I have what it takes to stay there, or do I have to apply marketing dollars to stay in the top 25?”

Animoca, the original publisher of Pretty Pet Salon, used Gtekna for marketing, but Gtekna was just one of many options Animoca tested. Pak said he had no idea why Animoca was banned. “I

never heard from the client about it,” Pak said, “and there is no reason for Apple to remove our clients’ apps just because they used our service. We have no case where our clients lost

their Apple developer programs, or had their apps removed by Apple.”
Indeed, thousands of developers have evidently used Gtekna, so it’s a mystery as to why Animoca had its apps deleted. Many developers — many larger and many smaller — had their apps

marketed the same way but weren’t singled out.

Gtekna speaks out

Pak said Gtekna has never used “bot farms” — automated computer programs that behave as users downloading apps. And Pak says the same about using “water armies” — masses of users in

China and other countries who are paid small amounts of money to download apps.

Rather, Pak said his company charges around $8,000 and higher to market apps with banner ads. The fruits of this marketing can yield about 20,000 downloads a day, he says. The amount of

time it takes for the marketing campaign varies.

Some developers suspect Gtekna is operating a bot farm, and many have said so privately with us. But no one has provided proof, because the results of a bot-farm effort and the results of

good advertising are quite similar: An app rises in the charts.

In defense of the legitimacy of his business, Pak doesn’t do much to help his own case. He claims he has 10,000 customers among developers but can’t name any. He says Gtekna runs

multiple campaigns a day but declines to disclose more about how his company does marketing. He also won’t share any details on his sole business partner.

While Pak denies all associations with bot farms, these automated downloading agents aren’t hard to find in other markets.

“A lot of these content farms are poisoning relevancy,” said Andy Yang, the chief executive of PlayHaven, which has a platform for cross-promoting apps in a legitimate way. “Some developers will try to get away with it. Others won’t take the chance. It is universally good news if Apple cracks down on them and the marketing dollars don’t go into bot farms.”

Chen Cheng, a computer science student at the University of Victoria in Canada, went undercover to fight as a soldier in a water army — a paid human poster on Chinese websites. He and his colleagues then used what they learned to write software that can detect the presence of bots.

Cheng said China-based marketing companies use thousands of Apple IDs — faked logins for Apple accounts — to help human workers download apps en masse. The marketing companies also use proxy services to change Internet Protocol address to help prevent the human workers from being detected by Apple, Cheng said.

“Since Apple has showed a more aggressive attitude toward this malicious manipulation, the [third-party marketing] firms hire paid posters to download and write reviews for the apps, just like what normal users would do,” Cheng said. “In this way, their behavior will become even harder to be discovered. The firms also suggest that attempts to enter into Top 10 or Top 3 are very dangerous and can be easily detected by Apple, but the Top 30 to Top 50 would be OK.”

Largely due to privacy reasons, Apple is moving away Unique Device Identifier numbers, or UDIDs. Each 40-digit number is a specific code associated with a particular iOS device. In late March, Apple began rejecting apps that tap into UDID code, and the company has signaled it is phasing out UDIDs entirely. But the more Apple distances itself from UDID in the defense of privacy, the harder it may find analyzing data that could lead to identifying market manipulators.

“To be able to discover the hidden behavior, a large amount of data is a necessity,” Cheng said. “For example, you can try to collect all the reviews from a certain Apple ID and then analyze the trends of downloading and commenting. Incorporating the name of apps, you may notice that a certain Apple ID has a higher probability of appearing along with the known hyped apps. Then this ID should be considered a malicious one. And if a set of these malicious IDs appear together under a new app, then the new app may be hyped by the paid reviewers.”

One developer who spoke on condition of anonymity believes that bot operators use the following strategy in the larger scheme toward automated downloads: “They put some code in an app through an SDK, tricking users out of their unique device identifier, the UDID. This code then seems to operate as a bot assisting in downloading [new] apps, or at least in acquiring valid UDIDs to use to automatically download apps.”

Cheng added that the Chinese marketers might be tapping into databases of iTunes accounts that have either been hijacked — “users might not notice extra apps” — or generated for bot activity.

“These accounts are sent to the bots along with ‘jobs’ from a central control that instruct the bot on which app to download,” Cheng said. “The central control program then uses chart positions to adjust the flow of installs to match the campaign. This is how they can ‘hold’ an app at a position for a long period of time.”

Rising costs drive app makers to the back alley

Some developers and app marketers have told us that Apple unwittingly created the illegitimate marketing economy by cracking down on legitimate app marketing techniques, such as Tapjoy’s incentivized installs, which are permitted on Android. They say desperate app makers may have turned to the “backstreet methods,” particularly in the fourth quarter of 2011, when rates for promoting apps tripled in some cases.

During the same quarter, the cost of acquiring new app users via ads — a legitimate form of user acquisition — hit an all-time high. Fiksu, the mobile ad firm, said that it saw the cost of user acquisition rise from $1.10 per user in May 2011 to $1.81 per user in December. That number is somewhat alarming, as many apps sell for 99 cents. The number dropped on a seasonal basis earlier this year and is now at $1.26 per user.

Mobile advertising costs fell during the post-holiday slowdown in January, but these rose again in February. Costs have since taken off on an upward trend thanks to spending by the mobile social network Gree, which is moving into the U.S. market after building a billion-dollar business in Japan.

Some developers are getting priced out of the market: The bigger ones can afford to spend a lot of money on advertising, but the smaller ones don’t have the budgets. To deal with that, some developers might have turned to the third-party marketing services, a less expensive promotional option.

“The number-one place you can get customers today is through the Google promotions, and the number-two place you can get customers is through paid advertising,” said Neil Young, the CEO of Ngmoco and an executive officer at Japan’s DeNA, the maker of the Mobage mobile social gaming platform. “The number-three place is chart position. So that’s one of the reasons, in aggregate, that the cost is rising. You’re having to spend money on paid advertising. And being experts at customer acquisition through paid advertising is not a trivial challenge for lots of developers.”

Nonetheless, Young believes it’s appropriate for Apple to crack down on bots and human water armies. He has little sympathy for developers who try to game the App Store simply because they have no better legitimate alternative.

“You could make the same point about crime,” Young said. “Crime exists because society is not serving the need of a segment. It doesn’t make it right to do it. I think that Apple’s right to crack down on it.”

Young also believes that Apple’s acquisition of Chomp — an algorithm-based app recommendation engine optimized for real-language queries — shows it intends to solve the market manipulation problem. Relative to the App Store, Chomp is much less focused on ranking charts and much more focused on helping users find great content through clever app discovery.

What’s more, Young says Ngmoco itself hopes to alleviate user-acquisition problems via its own Mobage social gaming platform. If enough users use Mobage to share games with each other,developers won’t have to spend as much money to acquire users. Apple offered some relief in the past week with the launch of iOS 6, which will allow users to “like” apps in the App Store, helping them spread in a more viral way on Facebook.

Naoki Aoyagi, the chief executive of Gree International, said that his own mobile social gaming platform became more popular after Apple’s crackdown announcement. In short, Aoyagi says developers became fearful of using illegitimate channels and have gone back to above-board platforms for marketing games. “The developers understand that manipulation is not working,”Aoyagi said. “[Apple’s crackdown] makes the market a better place.”

The sentiment is shared by an app developer that’s never resorted to bots or water armies: “I have heard the rumors and seen articles about our competitors,” said Ben Liu, the chief operating officer at mobile game publisher Pocket Gems. “We are aligned with Apple’s efforts here. The most fun app should rise to the top.”(source:businessinsider)