Sponsored listing?

Say what now?

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Interesting. Where did you see this? In product or on the Marketplace itself?

On the Atlassian Marketplace

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Ok interesting, must be a smaller set of people that this is enabled for, I don’t see the sponsored section anywhere on the marketplace.

Does make your head spin a bit with the questions Why? and For how much?.

All the companies in Remie’s screenshot are Atlassian Ventures Portfolio Companies: Atlassian Ventures Portfolio Companies | Atlassian

I would speculate that’s the answer to the why question.

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True, but it still leaves open a lot of questions. There already exists a featured collection for Atlassian Ventures. In addition, the term “sponsored listing” indicates these are ads, or at least that some sort of transaction has occurred. Will Atlassian also open this up to others? And if not, why?

It is really strange to see this out in the open without any communications from Atlassian whatsoever

CC: @ChrisHemphill

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We are also seeing it - so it may not be small experiment, but wider rollout. It is the most prominent thing on the home page of marketplace. Seems like very strange choice to me.

Hello,

Thank you for expressing your interest and curiosity regarding sponsored listing.

The Marketplace has launched an experiment aimed at introducing sponsored listing of apps on the Atlassian Marketplace homepage. The primary objective of this experiment is to evaluate the impact of sponsored listing on app visibility and user engagement, while ensuring that the engagement of organic app listings remains intact. We chose to initiate this test on the homepage, as it is the most prominent area in the marketplace where all users begin their journey.

If the experiment proves successful, we plan to extend this opportunity to our partners in the form of the benefits below:

  • Prime Real Estate: Sponsored apps can be prominently featured in the top section, strategically placed for maximum visibility.
  • Brand Awareness: Sponsored listings focus on raising awareness for new or trending apps.
  • Enhanced Visibility: Sponsored listings increase app exposure, enabling new apps to compete effectively and target the right users for conversion.
  • Competitive Advantage: Sponsored listings help apps stand out in crowded categories, improving their visibility.

Currently, this experiment is being tested with a limited cohort randomly selected for the test group. We will monitor key metrics and our hypotheses over the next five weeks to determine if this initiative makes sense for our customers and partners in the future, paving the way for broader deployment.

At present, for this experiment we are featuring apps from companies within the Atlassian Ventures portfolio - there were no transactions involved for this experimental placement. We plan to update the UX very soon with clearer information about why these apps are being shown. However, our focus remains on testing this as an experiment before we translate any potential benefits to our partners and onboard them for future sponsorship opportunities with us.

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Please don’t do this

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Please don’t. Just check the pricing for ads with anything that is related to “Atlassian”, “Confluence” or “Jira”. These money can’t be paid with the profits of reasonable priced apps in my understanding.

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I have personally given you plenty of feedback on how to make new vendors and apps more visible. For example, bringing back the ‘New’ category, rotating the new apps from the past X weeks, including free apps in the ‘Rising Star’ section (those can became paid apps later after getting traction), and creating a curated blog post series about new apps, etc.
But to claim that this sponsored visibility will help new apps is, in my opinion
 a rather funny statement. Sure, it will make the new apps of big players visible—those who have the capital to fund and bid for it. But these large vendors already have the resources and capital to make their apps visible and increase awareness. How exactly is this going to help smaller players who have a very good, innovative app based on a great idea?
Also, if you’re experimenting with this, please provide more information on how it would work. Is the visibility for a fixed period? Do vendors need to bid? Are there pricing tiers? Are there rules to prevent the same app from being sponsored in consecutive periods, or are there none?
Once again, I think the communication to vendors has been poorly handled.

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As a smaller vendor, I am deeply concerned about the potential implications of this initiative. Unlike larger vendors, we operate with limited marketing budgets, which likely means we won’t be able to afford sponsored ads.

Customers visit the Marketplace to find tools that solve their specific problems, often relying on organic rankings and unbiased reviews to guide their decisions. Introducing sponsored listings could disrupt this trust, shifting focus away from innovation and quality toward financial power.

I hope that Atlassian will implement mechanisms that level the playing field and provide support for smaller vendors. Doing so would ensure that the Marketplace remains a fair, diverse, and trusted platform for customers and vendors alike.

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Hey @EktaSengar

“The primary objective of this experiment is to evaluate the impact of sponsored listing on app visibility and user engagement, while ensuring that the engagement of organic app listings remains intact. We chose to initiate this test on the homepage, as it is the most prominent area in the marketplace where all users begin their journey.”

  • What is it exactly you are trying to evaluate here? That whatever app will end up on the best spots on the marketplace, will have increased traffic & conversion to them? This is already proven, just ask any partner about their experiences with the Staff Pick system, or recently the new categories like Bestseller and Spotlight.

Speaking of Bestseller and Spotlight, aren’t they covering the above mentioned benefits (all 4 of them!) already? Why not just tweak those? Even Rising Star category should cover “enabling new apps to compete effectively”.

What this will achieve here in my opinion (based on lack of information, as there wasn’t much communication from Atlassian on this topic) is to further widen the gaps between big and small partners.

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I hope Atlassian is considering not just the potential revenue you might earn, but also what introducing this means for the brand equity of the Marketplace itself. Offering sponsored listings sends signals to visitors, signals I’d argue are objectively negative.

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  1. logical business decision to increase short term revenue. Google makes a lot of money off it.

2.@MikeRinkSeibertMedia

what introducing this means for the brand equity of the Marketplace itself

Large companies pay a premium for the Atlassian brand.

  1. Atlassian does not have a quasi monopoly like Google. I bet the executive teams at monday.com, Notion
 are pretty happy to see this.

  2. in 2, 3 or 4 years does this revenue offset the inevitable hit to app revenue and sales in general. All costs get passed down to the client, higher they are more interesting competitors are. If vendors move resources from Atlassian to monday.com
 is a nightmare for Atlassian, the marketplace is currently a major selling point to get, keep, and expand Atlassian licenses which is the cornerstone of the business.

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I have fundamental questions:

  1. Has the MP been created to help customers find apps and extensions that need their needs and make the core ATL product portfolio more attractive to a wider clientele?
  2. Is the MP going to be instrumentalized by Atlassian to make more revenue through offering sponsorship bets that may list apps irrelevant to the user’s needs? Because revenue is more important than a client’s needs?

Here is an example from the App Store: I searched “Atlassian” and the search result screen is occupied by > 50% by a Bitcoin app ad.

Is that what you envisioning for the future MP look and feel @EktaSengar ?

It would be very sad and violate the ‘No Bullshit’ core Atlassian Value, because irrelevant sponsored app listings are just that.

You can stop overwhelm and confusion of the MP landing page just like Google search does: Show a simple input field and let the visitor describe what they need. Then leverage MP and product specific AI to list the best possible apps and how to use them.

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As others have stated already, please don’t!

This will only help large vendors that in all honesty don’t need the help to generate more revenue.

Instead focus on making the marketplace a level playing field for all vendors no matter the revenue they generate. So the actual solution provided in the app will determine ranking.

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This is a terrible idea. Don’t do it.