Why I Stopped Paying for Adverts Inside the iPhone App

A customer rang me a few weeks back, a bit wound up about a boosted post. Small local business. They'd set roughly the same budget as the month before and got charged more. They thought the price of adverts had just gone up.

It hadn't. They'd paid inside the iPhone app.

Apple charges a fee when a payment goes through an app on the iPhone. People know about it for games and subscriptions. It also hits boosted posts, promoted adverts, and those extra credits you buy when a screen pops up and asks for your card. If the payment happens inside the app, Apple is in the middle of it. On a lot of those payments the fee is 30%. Some smaller developers pay 15%. It's never been a small amount, and I've yet to see it written in plain English on the screen you're about to tap.

So the company running the advert doesn't keep the lot. A slice goes to Apple for taking the payment inside their app. Either the price you see is higher, or less of what you paid actually gets spent on the advert. You didn't mean to buy either of those.

I just tell them to pay for it in the browser.

Open Safari. Or Chrome, Firefox or Edge, it's the same for this. On a laptop, whatever you already use. Go to the website, log into the same account, and post the advert there. Or boost it there. Pay on the site. You're paying the advert platform. Apple doesn't get that in-app fee, because the payment never went through the app.

You do have to stay on the website. I've watched the phone kick someone straight back into the app, and then they're paying the app price again without really noticing. If you can still see the address bar, you're in the right place. If the app has taken over the screen, you're not.

This only works when the website will actually take the money. Some apps don't offer it, and there's no button to look for. I'm not talking about any workaround for those. If the site won't let you pay, that's the end of it. Where it does let you, which is most of the social apps my customers use, the browser is the way I do it.

If you're boosting posts every week, it's worth looking at what the app has been charging you. It doesn't show as its own line. It just sits inside the total. Next time, open Safari, or the browser on the computer, and compare the price before you confirm it.

Same advert. Just don't hand Apple a cut of it on the way through.