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The ad slot is purely a revenue tool, not a discovery aid. It forces developers to pay just to defend their own branded search terms. App Store Search ads are a hidden increase in commissions that you either accept to pay by bidding on your own app's name, or omit at the expense of having competitors show on top of you all the time, stealing your revenue. It creates a significant drain on resources for indies, to the point that it's often no longer worth it to bother creating apps.

That's why Apple is now doing everything in their power to make app development easier, but that will more likely increase quantity and not necessarily quality, as it only deepens the ecosystem's problems by inviting more noise. The practical reality is, if you are not VC-backed and if you are not playing the heavy ad spend game, the App Store is more of a barrier than anything else.