App Marketing Costs Hit All-Time High in June, Reports Fiksu

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - July 23, 2014) - CASUAL CONNECT - For the first time in its four years of analyzing mobile app marketing competition and costs, Fiksu (www.fiksu.com) reported that its Cost Per Loyal User Index breached the $2 threshold, coming in at $2.23, an increase of 25 percent over May and a 49-percent year-over-year increase.

Despite the increase in Cost Per Loyal User, CPI (Cost Per Install) actually plummeted to $0.98 on iOS, down 23 percent from May. For iOS games, CPI dropped even further to $0.85 from May's $1.11. At the same time, June's App Store Competitive Index, which measures aggregate daily download volume among the top 200 ranked apps, dropped from May's 6.6M to 6.1M.

This proved that while the cost of advertising actually decreased in June, consumers were opting for choices beyond their mobile devices during the summer months, including being captivated by the World Cup and, as a result, there was less discovery and usage of new apps from organic users. These organic users are frequently the most loyal, and with this marked reduction, the Cost Per Loyal User increased significantly in June.

In addition to the fact that mobile app users were otherwise occupied during the summer months was the fact that Apple briefly re-evaluated its policy for rewarding consumers who watch videos, causing advertisers to temporarily cutback on video advertising. With this effective, low-cost avenue to reach loyal users impacted, overall costs to acquire loyal users increased. 

"The June Fiksu Indexes reflected what we would consider a perfect storm of summer activity including, the distraction of the World Cup, and untimely changes to video-based installs," said Micah Adler, CEO of Fiksu. "The combination of these factors had a direct impact on how consumers discovered apps. As a result, while we observed a decrease in overall media costs, we also observed a decrease in loyal usage during the month of June, thus driving up the Cost Per Loyal User."

For Fiksu's full analysis, visit http://www.fiksu.com/resources/fiksu-indexes#analysis.

To date, Fiksu has accumulated more than 350 billion app actions, including launches, registrations and in-app purchases, as well as massive amounts of data from real-time bidding requests and mobile advertising networks. Additionally, Fiksu has also driven more than 2.9 billion app downloads for its customers.

About Fiksu
Fiksu is the leading provider of mobile marketing products. The company's patent-pending Programmatic Mobile Demand Platform applies intelligent technology to proprietary big data to master ALL the challenges of mobile advertising -- including tracking, optimization, media buying and integration. This cohesive approach spans the entire mobile ecosystem and ultimately delivers the best marketing performance. Additionally, Fiksu offers FreeMyApps®, the world's largest app discovery platform where users are rewarded. Based in Boston, Mass., Fiksu is venture-backed by Qualcomm Ventures and Charles River Ventures. More at www.fiksu.com, @Fiksu, and on the Fiksu blog.