Sponsored placements

A sponsored placement shows one of your live apps in a clearly labeled Sponsored slot above the results on a category page, or when buyers search for words you choose. It is the only paid placement on AppsXi.

The rules

  • There is at most one sponsored slot on a page, always labeled Sponsored with a link to what that means.
  • Sponsorship never changes the charts or the order of results. Rankings are earned (see how rankings work).
  • When several campaigns target the same page, they take turns hour by hour.
  • If your app is already in the top three results on that page, the slot is skipped rather than showing it twice.
  • Only verified developers (identity checked) with no strikes can sponsor, and only live apps. If your app is frozen, withdrawn or gets a strike, its campaigns stop showing automatically.
  • A campaign runs for up to 90 days.

Request a placement

  1. Go to Developer → Sponsored.
  2. Choose the app and where it shows:
  3. A category page: the slot appears on that category, its parent category and its subcategories.
  4. Search words: up to ten words or phrases. The slot appears when a search contains every word of one of them (for example screen recorder matches "best screen recorder for mac").
  5. Optionally add a short line (up to 80 characters) to show under the name instead of your short description.
  6. Choose the dates and send the request.

AppsXi reviews each request, replies with the price and, once agreed, approves it. Payment is by invoice for now. The agreed price is shown on the campaign.

While it runs

You can pause, resume or cancel a campaign at any time from Developer → Sponsored. A campaign AppsXi paused (for example after a complaint) stays paused until AppsXi resumes it. Views and clicks are counted per day (a view counts once per visitor per hour, a click once per ten minutes) and shown next to the campaign. Nothing that identifies a buyer is stored.

Clicks go through a short /s/… link on AppsXi, which records the click and sends the buyer to your app's page. Sponsored links carry rel="sponsored" for search engines.