Treading carefully? The current App Store search ads are mostly useful for tricking newbies into downloading the wrong app, and all of Apple's music apps keep nagging me to try Apple Music. If anything, I hope their new model will be a little more subtle.
I meant Apple treading carefully in this new project (as the article mentions, they apparently reached to just a handful of major developers first and aren’t rushing something out). I agree that currently the App Store ads are almost never useful, although I appreciate that they aren’t creepy—for example, Apple doesn’t seem to try to ultra-target you through contents of your messages, like Google ads do with Gmail and Instagram does with Facebook posts.
What I envision could ideally happen is (1) Apple working out a way to place ads unobtrusively, possibly with an option to turn them off, and (2) them reinvesting a bit of their huge reserves into promotion for wider variety of apps whose developers wouldn’t otherwise advertise.
This could reduce App Store’s popularity gap, improving discoverability of original, lesser known but quality apps. By helping developers create an OK business on the platform without necessarily making it into the category’s Top 10, in longer term Apple is investing into user experience: more stability makes the platform more attractive to quality developers.
