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Purchasely Takeaways #6: Google drops fees to 15%, NY Times mobile growth, FTC vs dark patterns, Nabla

Purchasely Team
Purchasely Team
@purchaselycom
Hello everyone,
Here is the November edition of our monthly Newsletter.
Will you attend App Promotion Summit Berlin? We will! Let’s meet in Berlin on 1st and 2nd December 2021.
The Purchasely team.

Two major announcements made by Google
1️⃣  Google will drop subscription fees to 15% in January 2022 
Google said it would reduce its commission on subscriptions for apps to 15 percent. The new commission fees will start in January starting from day one.
Google also said e-books and on-demand streaming music services would be eligible for fees as low as 10 percent, as content costs account for the majority of sales.
2️⃣  Google enables alternative billing systems in South Korea
The Korean Bill passed in August (see our previous newsletter) is already impacting Google. On November 4, the Senior Director Public Policy released this statement:
Developers will now be able to add an alternative in-app billing system, alongside Google Play’s billing system, for their mobile and tablet users in South Korea. At checkout, users will be able to choose which billing system to use.
But Google will keep a 11% commission fee if the app decides to deploy an alternative payment system.
Service fees for distributing apps via Android and Google Play will continue to be based on digital sales on the platform. We recognize, however, that developers will incur costs to support their billing system, so when a user selects alternative billing, we will reduce the developer’s service fee by 4%. For example, for the vast majority of developers who pay 15% for transactions through Google Play’s billing system, their service fee for transactions through the alternate billing system would be 11%.
Epic Games vs Apple: follow up
We published last month a wrap up about the judgement in the lawsuit brought by Epic Games against Apple. What has happened since our last newsletter?
  • Apple filed an appeal on October 8 against the injunction set by the Federal Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers. On November 9, the Court will hear Apple’s motion (read the 24-page Apple’s file).
  • At the same time, the Dutch antitrust authority might find that Apple’s in-app payment system is anti-competitive (read the Reuters article). According to anonymous sources, the Dutch authority has not levied a fine against Apple, but demanded changes to the in-app payment system.
  • On October 23, Apple updated the App Store Review Guidelines and allows win back offers that are available out-of-app 👇
Podcast: Patricia Martorana, Mobile Growth @ The New York Times
Patricia Martorana is a Senior Product Manager in charge of Mobile Growth at The New York Times. She was interviewed by Branch in the Episode #63 of How I Grew This podcast.
🎧 Key takeaways from this 34-minute podcast: 🎧 
  • Sharing a premium article to a friend is allowed and gives great results.
  • The NY Times is using an AI algorithm to decide to set up an article as a premium content.
  • Many User Interface A/B tests are being made. 
  • 3 categories of paywall messaging can be used: brand-driven, value proposition-driven and offer attributes-driven.
The New York Times just announced that 90% of its news subscriptions are digital, 6.6 million in the U.S. and 1 million outside the U.S.
LATAM: In-App consumer spends reach $600 million in Q1 2021
Appsflyer and App Annie jointly released a large set of metrics about Latin America in the 2021 Edition of State of App Marketing LATAM.
Consumers spent $635 million on In-App Purchases and Subscriptions in Q1 2021, +100% vs Q1 2018:
  • Brazil $270 million,
  • Rest of LATAM $215 million,
  • Mexico $150 million.
Google Play takes over 50% market share of App Store consumer spend in Brazil and in Spanish speaking countries (excluding Mexico).
The FTC puts companies on notice that sign-ups must be clear, consensual, and easy to cancel
The Federal Trade Commission issued a new enforcement policy statement warning companies against deploying illegal dark patterns that trick or trap consumers into subscription services.
Some U.S. websites are using a variety of illegal subscription practices. Two examples of such tactics among many more:
  • to enforce the subscriber to listen to lengthy ads before it could cancel;
  • to convert free trials to paid subscriptions before the free trial ended. 
The FTC defines 3 key requirements:
  1. Disclose clearly and conspicuously all material terms of the product or service. The information must be provided upfront when the consumer first sees the offer and generally as prominent as the deal offer itself.
  2. Obtain the consumer’s express informed consent before charging them for a product or services.
  3. Provide easy and simple cancellation to the consumer. Companies should provide cancellation mechanisms that are at least as easy to use as the method the consumer used to buy the product or service.
Women's Health: Purchasely powers Nabla's In-App Purchases
Nabla, a leading virtual clinic, is rolling out a membership powered by Purchasely. The Women’s Health app offers an access to the advice of top clinicians and mental health experts.
Delphine Groll, co-founder and COO of Nabla, highlights:
We surveyed over 2,200 women, and the outcome was very clear: across all stages of life, there are currently critical gaps in women’s health journeys. Given the success of our app in France since April, we wanted to quickly expand internationally and make our services accessible in English speaking countries.
Nabla is partnering with Purchasely in order to deploy in the UK a membership that offers an access to the advice of top clinicians such as gynaecologists, midwives, dieticians and mental health experts for £5.99/month or £50/year.
One more thing
📚 Some fresh content is available on our blog, make sure to check it out:
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Purchasely Team
Purchasely Team @purchaselycom

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