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Zoya Street
Home   >   Self-Publishing   >   Marketing   >   CPA hits all-time high

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CPA hits all-time high

By on February 1, 2012

Cost per Loyal User Index

Fiksu’s Cost Per Loyal User Index, a measure of how much it costs to acquire a customer who will open a mobile app three times or more, rose to an all-time high last December at $1.81. This is still lower than the CPA reported by developers for other platforms such as Facebook; Rick Thomson of Playdom said last October that it cost between $2 and $3 to acquire a customer, while at the Social Games Summit last November Kixeye reported a cost per acquisition of $4. These figures are available on our CPA page and are updated regularly.

Mobile Beat points out that the high cost of customer acquisition last December will have been partly caused by the rush to reach a top position in the app charts before Apple’s rankings freeze between 25th and 28th. Those top in the charts by 25th would benefit the most from the 6.8 million iPhones and Android devices activated on Christmas day alone. This momentary hike nevertheless came during an upward trend in CPA, as virality has become less attainable and competition has increased. To forecast what rising CPA means for your games business, use the online games spreadsheet.

To learn about how CPA is calculated and get updates on the latest CPA benchmarks as they come in, do check the CPA, CAC and Customer Acquisition Cost page regularly.

About Zoya Street

I’m responsible for all written content on the site. As a freelance journalist and historian, I write widely on how game design and development have changed in the past, how they will change in the future, and how that relates to society and culture as a whole. I’m working on a crowdfunded book about the Dreamcast, in which I treat three of the game-worlds it hosted as historical places. I also write at Pocketgamer.biz and The Borderhouse.