Mobile Metrics
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Posted by: Jo WightmanApril 2, 2012
In Jan 2011, Android and iOS stood head to head in terms of smart phone devices in the US (approximately 25 percent each). But today, Android beats iOS by a wide margin, commanding 46 percent device share to Apple's 35 percent.
And yes, as I talk with clients about their mobile app business plans and marketing activities, it feels like the statistics are flipped...which totally confuses me! We'll be following up this blog post with some ideas on how to get started with Android and what to consider. But for now, here's some more data about the Android opportunity to arm yourself with!
1. Ad Impression Share
It isn't only device share where Android leads iOS. According to inMobi, Millennial Media and Jumptap, (three leading mobile ad networks), Android also beats iOS in terms of ad impressions. On average, we estimate that Android commands 33% percent share of impressions, compared to only 21 percent on iOS.
2. Cost Effectiveness
Ad spend and cost effectiveness is a much more tricky thing to figure out. However, starting with data that is publicly available, Millennial Media has reported that 49 percent of spend goes through the Android platform (for 54 percent of impressions), compared to 41 percent of spend on iOS (for 28 percent of impressions), suggesting that impressions on Android are at least 40 percent cheaper than iOS. That said, every app marketer knows impressions are only the tip of the iceberg—clicks, conversations and loyal usage matter more. At Fiksu, we find that the balance between using these Android and iOS metrics varies considerably, depending on the quality of an app. But all else being equal, Android is better value than iOS. -
Posted by: Viki ZabalaDecember 8, 2011
This week, Android hit a huge milestone, reaching 10 billion total app downloads and Google has indicated that it's now seeing up to one billion app installs every 30 days. Apple's App Store has seen nearly double the total downloads – roughly 20 billion cumulative – according to TechCrunch.
With thousands upon thousands of mobile apps now available to consumers – and a flood of new entrants surfacing in app stores every day – competition is fierce. The biggest challenge facing both new and veteran developers and their marketing counterparts is how to stand out from the crowd and generate the download volumes necessary to create a successful mobile app business.
To help provide developers and marketers with best practices and actionable steps for solving the mobile app discovery dilemma, we presented a webinar this week on the topic, in partnership with FierceWireless.
Jo Wightman, director of client development here at Fiksu was joined by key industry players including Robin Thompson, chief marketing officer at WMC Global; Taylor Cascino, head of strategic partnerships at Chomp; Rob Carroll, director of publishing at Tapjoy and Marcus Startzel, senior vice president, sales at Millennial Media. The panel explored how app developers and marketers can build their brands by strategically leveraging traffic sources across the mobile ecosystem – from mobile ad networks to real-time bidding exchanges to incentivized download networks – to vault from relative obscurity into the upper ranks of app store bestseller lists.
Missed the webinar? Don’t worry – you can catch it on demand here.
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Posted by: Viki ZabalaAugust 30, 2011
A recent study by eMarketer revealed that 63 percent of mobile marketers are either not trying to measure return on investment on mobile campaigns or are not able to evaluate performance at all. This sobering study shows that while the mobile industry has made huge strides in recent years, gauging app marketing effectiveness continues to be a challenge. For many, click-based campaigns are the default metric, however, like the name suggests, they only measure clicks. And clicks are ephemeral – they are not synonymous with user engagement and loyalty.
Acquiring loyal users is the key to building a sustainable mobile app business. And the best way to do this is to more precisely understand the competitive landscape into which you are competing for visibility and pouring your budget.
Last month, we introduced our Fiksu Indexes to equip mobile app marketers with more meaningful metrics to benchmark their performance against industry averages. Published monthly, the Indexes measure the monthly fluctuations in competition for rank in the app stores and the cost to acquire loyal users (those who open an app three times or more).
Our July Index metrics are now in – revealing that last month was a slightly less expensive month for mobile marketers to acquire loyal users and achieve rank in the app stores.
- The App Store Competitive Index recorded a month-over-month decline from 4.505 million app downloads per day in June to 4.25 million in July.
- Following four previous months of consecutive increases in the cost to acquire loyal users, the Cost per Loyal User Index decreased by 5.5 percent from $1.27 in June to $1.20 in July.
Here are a few industry reactions:
In response to the July Index findings, VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi comments, "It is interesting that app developers can use the Fiksu data to get a snapshot of the overall app economy." For complete VentureBeat coverage, please see here.
In a piece featuring the July data, Pocket Gamer’s Jon Jordan writes, “Fiksu comments that the decline from June to July could be due to the tailing off of incentivized downloads on iOS, which it says has reduced the ability of publishers to quickly gain rank through bulk downloads, but which delivers higher loyal user conversion rates at a lower net cost.”
For more information, charts and our full analysis of the new Index data, please visit our Index resource library.
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