Not showing up for me at any time, perhaps this is that complementary thing you get for new iCloud accounts and new Apple devices? (Or was that the one free year thing?)
While it is probably advertising for a service, it's not a generic place for arbitrary advertisements. I believe the difference between "there will be random ads here" and "you bought a thing, this is what you get with it for free if you want it, or you can remove it and never see it again as a normal option" is pretty big.
My iCloud account isn't new. It's many years old. The device I have is old but only 3 months old. I bought it from someone else and it's still under warranty so maybe that's why.
> I believe the difference between "there will be random ads here" and "you bought a thing, this is what you get with it for free if you want it, or you can remove it and never see it again as a normal option" is pretty big.
That's a fair point. I do notice Apple going in the wrong direction though. Even the "search" tab in the App Store now shows ads for random apps (before doing a search). That's fairly odd.
For the store I sort-of understand it, it's a store after all, the only purpose is to extract money from customers (in exchange for services/goods), and with a non-physical store the only real distinction you can make is how high at the top of a list your product sits. That said, I don't really use it that often anymore as I already have all the apps I want or need. Perhaps also why I tried the arcade a while back but didn't really end up using much of it for long.
> Even the "search" tab in the App Store now shows ads for random apps (before doing a search). That's fairly odd.
The random searches I've seen always have to do with my previous searches in that box. I think this is probably a case of Apple not having a good App Store search suggestion engine. (This happens in the Podcasts app as well.)
- normal search for the list of apps that exist
- paid search positioning on top of that
- previous searches you made
- suggested results just for you
and then somehow blending that into a bad list of search results. (this is just a crappy guess on my part)
On one hand I don't care all that much, on the other hand I know there are people that do go browsing the store looking for new stuff to try out, and using search seems to be the only reasonable way to go looking for things with so many apps being available.
After combining that with your other post, perhaps the formula they are using is iCloud account on a 'difference' device where it calculates if the new device is 'better' than the old one, thus was a device upgrade and therefore you may want to try the arcade. Personally I don't care for the arcade, but it does seem to be some sort of one-off notification when something in your device/account mix changes.
Reminds me of the Office365 trial tile in Windows that doesn't actually do anything but when you open the start menu it is always there in accounts that are newly signed in to a computer. It's not really in the way, but it is always in your face until you remove it (but then it does stay away).
EDIT: screenshot:
https://i.imgur.com/64sP9yh.jpg