Benchmarking app store competitiveness & the cost of mobile app marketing

Mobile marketing should not require guesswork. Our Fiksu for Mobile Apps user acquisition platform injects predictability into your campaigns, so you can identify with precision the specific rank and app store category that will deliver the downloads you need to meet your business goals.

We've been looking into our own data to help you better understand app marketing trends and costs. We examined mobile app actions captured by our platform – processing more than 11 billion app launches, in-app purchases and registrations to date – to drill into the fluctuating dynamics of the complex app marketing landscape. Published monthly, the Fiksu Indexes will not only equip you with a benchmark of how your mobile app marketing stacks up against industry averages, but will also paint a "big picture" landscape of the trends impacting your business goals.

The Fiksu Indexes include:

• App Store Competitive Index - Ever wondered if specific positions inside the top ranked apps become more and less competitive over time? This index analyzes the average aggregate volume of the daily downloads of the Top 200 ranked free iPhone apps in the U.S.
• Cost per Loyal User Index - Cost per loyal user is a more meaningful measure of ROI than click-based campaigns. Loyal users are the key to building sustained growth for your mobile app business. This index tracks the fluctuating cost of acquiring loyal users (people who open an app three times or more.)
• Fiksu Analysis - Read our take on the story behind the numbers each month, based on our expert understanding of mobile traffic, app store behaviors and our analysis of 11 billion mobile app launches, registrations and in-app purchases recorded via the Fiksu for Mobile Apps user acquisition platform.

How can the Fiksu Indexes help you?

You are not an island. Your app is competing for users with almost half a million other apps. The best way to improve your mobile marketing is to more precisely understand the competitive landscape into which you are pouring your budget. The Fiksu Indexes reveal how industry dynamics – such as iOS upgrades, sales of mobile devices, advertiser demand and ad network/publisher inventory – impact your business goals. Armed with this insight, you can adapt and plan with more agility.

For example, maybe your cost to acquire loyal users was more expensive in May than in March and you are trying to figure out why? The index shows how much the industry paid on average so you can compare and contrast. Perhaps your app’s rank slipped one month. Our index shows you the average aggregate volume of daily download totals of the top ranked U.S. apps over a month's period so you can assess the competitive landscape and understand how their volumes impacted your rank.

App Store Competitive Index

December 2011

The App Store Competitive Index tracks the aggregate volume of downloads per day achieved by the Top 200 ranked free iPhone apps in the U.S. In December, the Index peaked at 6.04 million downloads per day, beating November’s previous all-time high of 5.65 million daily downloads – a seven percent increase and the third straight month of increasing app traffic.

Cost per Loyal User Index

December 2011

The Cost per Loyal User Index measures the cost of acquiring a loyal user for brands who proactively market their apps. For the purposes of the Index, loyal users are defined as people who open an app three times or more. This month, the cost per loyal user peaked at a record $1.81, up 26.5 percent from $1.43 in November.

Fiksu's Analysis

On January 24, Apple announced it sold 37 million iPhones – more than expected – during the last quarter of 2011, reporting staggering quarterly revenues of $46.3 billion.

Much of this story unfolded during December when smartphones were the Christmas gift most people were hoping to unwrap. In fact, on Christmas Day alone, more than 6.8 million new iOS and Android devices were activated.

For mobile marketers eager to secure their share of the Christmas app download frenzy, December is such a critical month. Our Indexes reveal the extreme marketing that took place during the month as advertisers spent heavily to drive up their app store rankings and lock-in a “pole position” before the App Store four-day ranking freeze which began on Christmas Day.

According to our research, the last half of December was the most competitive for mobile marketers: in fact, traffic and dollars spent in the final week of December increased 100 percent over prior weeks. This presented advertisers with sufficient budgets the rare chance to acquire twice as many loyal users. For many major app brands, and game apps in particular, this exceptional opportunity certainly justified increased budgets. Eager consumers actively downloaded apps on their new devices, and the brands that had secured higher ranks were able to acquire a higher volume of loyal app users.