Developers are already buying out ad space around their own games just days after Apple launched its App Store Search Ads.
As noted by SOOMLA CEO Yaniv Nizan in a blog on LinkedIn, Zynga, King, Smule, and MZ have already bought ad space on their own games so that other developers cannot capitalise on the space.
In particular, Nizan found that MZ has placed ads for both Game of War and Mobile Strike when users search the term "game of war".
Zynga has also bought up ad space for CSR Racing 2. A search of "csr racing" brings up the sequel as an ad ahead of the previous titles.
Brand power
However, Nizan also pointed out that these are only small fry compared to some bigger brands.
Twitter, for example, has not bought ad space when searching its name, allowing a smaller company to bid low on the "twitter" search ad space for cheap traffic.
The same is true for both Rovio's Angry Birds and Niantic Labs' Pokemon GO. Neither developer has placed ads in "angry birds" or "pokemon go" searches due to the power of their brands.
To that end, Nizan suggests developers capitalise on this early. He recommends placing ad bids at $0.01 on popular brand searches to grab some cheap traffic before the developers buy up the ad space.
