Google Play Store ratings are ALL about to be recalculated

The Google Play Store has built up an extensive catalogue of app reviews and ratings ever since it was launched under the Android Market name way back in 2008. These scores are currently treated equally regardless of how old or how new they are. But according to this update post by Kobi Glick (Google Play, Product Lead), this entire system will change very soon.

Although treating scores equally may seem like the fairest ratings system on paper, it fails to take into account the fact that, in most cases, older reviews are no longer representative of an app’s current state. Certain ratings, for example, may be lower due to bugs that have since been fixed. Alternatively, people’s scores may have been negatively impacted by a lack of features, something that may have been rectified shortly after. On the opposite end of the spectrum, recent reviews of an app could be extremely negative due to bugs and dated features, while older ratings may be much more positive because, at the time, the app was one of the best offerings around. 

These flaws essentially mean that ratings aren’t always an accurate representation of an app’s quality. Android developers have been aware of this issue for quite some time now and have been asking Google to do something about it, so it finally is.

Starting this August, recent app reviews will become more important than older ones when it comes to calculating Play Store ratings. Google hasn’t specified how the new total will be calculated, but it says developers can preview their new rating starting today. Furthermore, because users add an average of 0.7 stars to reviews when developers respond to negative ratings, Google will begin highlighting ones it believes deserve a response.

Digital Ad Spending in the US Will Surpass Traditional Spending in 2019

This year will mark a major milestone in the world of advertising. For the first time, digital ad spending in the US will exceed traditional ad spending, according to eMarketer’s latest forecast. By 2023, digital will surpass two-thirds of total media spending.

Digital Ad Spending

Total digital ad spending in the US will grow 19% to $129.34 billion this year—54.2% of estimated total US ad spending. And mobile will continue its dominance, accounting for more than two-thirds of digital ad spending, at $87.06 billion this year.

Also for the first time, the combined share of the duopoly (Google and Facebook) will drop, even as their revenues grow.

Top 5 Companies, Ranked by US Net Digital Ad Revenue Share, 2018 & 2019 (% of total digital ad spending)

The big winner this year will be No. 3 player Amazon, which continues to take share from just about everyone. Its US ad business will grow more than 50% this year and its share of the US digital ad market will swell to 8.8% this year.

“Amazon offers a major benefit to advertisers, especially CPG and direct-to-consumer [D2C] brands,” said eMarketer forecasting director Monica Peart. “The platform is rich with shoppers’ behavioral data for targeting and provides access to purchase data in real time. This type of access was once only available through the retail partner to share at their discretion. But with Amazon’s suite of sponsored ads, marketers have unprecedented access to the 'shelves' where consumers are shopping.”

Traditional Ad Spending

Where are the digital dollars coming from? Directories, such as the Yellow Pages, will take the biggest hit—down 19% this year. Traditional print (newspapers and magazines) spending is a close second, which will drop nearly 18%. Overall, traditional ad spending’s share in the US will drop to 45.8% in 2019, from 51.4% last year.

“The steady shift of consumer attention to digital platforms has hit an inflection point with advertisers, forcing them to now turn to digital to seek the incremental gains in reach and revenues which are disappearing in traditional media advertising,” Peart said.

US Traditional Media Ad Spending Growth, 2019 (% change)

TV ad spending will decline 2.2% to $70.83 billion this year, largely because there are no elections or big events, such as the Olympics or World Cup. The presidential election next year will propel TV ad spending back into positive growth, before falling again in the following years.

The 20 Internet Giants That Rule the Internet (20 years Review...)

(Click here to view the full size info-graphic)

With each passing year, an increasingly large segment of the population no longer remembers images loading a single pixel row at a time, the earsplitting sound of a 56k modem, or the domination of web portals.

Many of the top websites in 1998 were basically news aggregators or search portals, which are easy concepts to understand. Today, brand touch-points are often spread out between devices (e.g. mobile apps vs. desktop site) and a myriad of services and sub-brands (e.g. Facebook’s constellation of apps). As a result, the world’s biggest websites are complex, interconnected web properties.

Today’s visualization, inspired by an earlier work published by WaPo, looks at which of the internet giants have evolved to stay on top, and which have faded into internet lore.

AMERICA MOVES ONLINE

For millions of curious people the late ’90s, the iconic AOL compact disc was the key that opened the door to the World Wide Web. At its peak, an estimated 35 million people accessed the internet using AOL.

By 1999, the AOL rode the Dot-com bubble to dizzying heights, with a valuation of $222 billion dollars.

AOL’s brand may not carry the caché it once did, but the brand never completely faded into obscurity. The company continually evolved, finally merging with Yahoo after Verizon acquired both of the legendary online brands. Verizon has high hopes for the company – called Oath – to evolve into a “third option” for advertisers and users who are fed up with Google and Facebook.

A CITY OF GIFS AND WEB LOGS

As internet usage began to reach critical mass, web hosts such as AngelFire and GeoCities made it easy for people to create a new home on the Web.

GeoCities, in particular, made a huge impact on the early internet, hosting millions of websites and giving people a way to actually participate in creating online content. If the web host was a physical place, it would’ve been the third largest city in America, just after Los Angeles.

This early online community was at risk of being erased permanently when GeoCities was finally shuttered by Yahoo in 2009, but the nonprofit Internet Archive took special efforts to create a thorough record of GeoCities-hosted pages.

FROM A TO Z

In December of 1998, long before Amazon became the well-oiled retail machine we know today, the company was in the midst of a massive holiday season crunch.

In the real world, employees were pulling long hours and even sleeping in cars to keep the goods flowing, while online, Amazon.com had become one of the biggest sites on the internet as people began to get comfortable with the idea of purchasing goods online. Demand surged as the company began to expand their offering beyond books.

DIGITAL MAGAZINE RACK

Meredith – with the possible exception of Oath – may be the most unrecognizable name to many people looking at today’s top 20 list. While Meredith may not be a household name, the company controls many of the country’s most popular magazine brands (People, Sports Illustrated, Health, etc.) including their sizable digital footprints. The company also has a slew of local television networks around the United States.

After its acquisition of Time Inc. in 2017, Meredith became the largest magazine publisher in the world.

“HEY, GOOGLE”

When people have burning questions, they increasingly turn to the internet for answers, but the diversity of sources for those answers is shrinking.

Even as recently as 2013, we can see that About.com, Ask.com, and Answers.com were still among the biggest websites in America. Today though, Google appears to have cemented its status as a universal wellspring of answers.

As smart speakers and voice assistants continue penetrate the market and influence search behavior, Google is unlikely to face any near-term competition from any company not already in the top 20 list.

NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK

Social media has long since outgrown its fad stage and is now a common digital thread connecting people across the world. While Facebook rapidly jumped into the top 20 by 2007, other social media infused brands took longer to grow into internet giants.

In 2018, Twitter, Snapchat, and Facebook’s umbrella of platforms were are all in the top 20, with LinkedIn and Pinterest not far behind.

NOTE: This ranking uses ComScore data which is focused on the U.S. and looks at unique visitors/viewers.