Cost to Secure Loyal App Users Surges Past $3 in March, Reveals Fiksu Indexes

BOSTON, MA--(Marketwired - Apr 30, 2015) - For the first time, the cost to acquire loyal app users (CPLU) surpassed the $3 mark, according to the Fiksu Indexes published today by Fiksu, Inc., the data-fueled mobile marketing technology company. At $3.09, this represents a 10 percent increase in CPLU since last month and a significant 113 percent rise from last year. This relentless growth is representative of a larger trend, reflecting the expanding power of mobile marketing to reach app users and the rising costs happening in parallel.

Increasing costs and competition observed in the index are on par with worldwide trends, as mobile spend is rising globally. A recent report from eMarketer predicts mobile advertising spend will overtake web advertising by 2016. What's more, by a 3-1 margin, the majority of the ad spending is happening inside apps -- not the mobile Web. The competition for the attention and loyalty of app users has become more challenging, and for marketers, securing an app download from a user is no longer the end-game. In today's competitive landscape, obtaining a loyal user is much more critical to the success of an app, and even more difficult than ever before -- and in-app ads provide better targeting, much more inventory, and more accurate tracking than mobile Web.

The Cost Per Install Index (CPI), which measures the cost per app install directly attributed to advertising, increased to $1.53 on iOS in March, a rise of 20 percent since last month and 46 percent since last year. Similarly, the Cost Per Launch Index (CPL), which tracks the cost to drive mobile app engagement, increased to $0.31 on iOS; up 26 percent month-over-month and 62 percent year-over-year. Comparable increases were seen on Android, with even more drastic year-over-year figures: Android Cost Per Launch increased to $0.24, a 56 percent rise over last month and a 135 percent increase year-over-year.

On the volume side, the Fiksu App Store Competitive Index, which tracks the average aggregate daily download volume of the top 200 free iOS apps, reached 8.1M in March, a 16 percent decrease from last month but an increase of 15 percent since last March, demonstrating its ongoing upward trajectory year-over-year and reflecting the increasing consumer appetite for apps as the primary way to interact with smartphones and tablets.