How long before we see a post that people are being fooled into installing some copycat apps which are nearly identical to original apps but are getting promoted by Search Ad Basics?
How long? You can already do this with the existing search ads.
By promoting your app through search ads you are greatly increasing your chances of getting detected by app review or the company you are cloning very quickly. Meaning you are going to get pulled pretty fast, and are still paying for it. I don't see how the economics would work out.
Tt is more used for competitor apps stealing the top search result for things they aren't ranked highly for.
Maybe 5 years ago, but I don't think they have any quality bar now. For every decent quality game on the app store there are dozens of terrible clones: https://youtu.be/yU6WC4dpaHM?t=12s
It's incredible that on one hand, they can pull up competent and dedicated developers for a minor transgression, but then allow something as ugly and misleading as the above example.
I know it first hand. Our app has an auto-renewing subscription, and they are nitpicking every little detail on it (Not letting us say "Free Trial" even though it is literally a free trial for a week, with the subscription price/renewal stated clearly on the same view.) Yet an app like iHeartRadio has a "Free Trial" button with no visible terms, no visible price, and no renewal frequency listed gets a pass.
Plus they let those scam VPN apps through with a "Free Trial" that immediately charges you $99, and they stayed at the top of the grossing charts for days. It is insanely frustrating. The app review process at Apple is a joke now, honestly. I'm pretty sure it has been outsourced to some third party, we always get through on appeal, but why should a year old app with a 4.6 star rating with thousands of reviews have to appeal every single update submission.
Sorry for the rant, just dealing with this exact problem as we speak.
