Fiksu, a Boston-based startup that offers the industry’s first mobile app user acquisition platform, today debuted two new “Fiksu Indexes” created to help mobile app marketers benchmark their performance against industry averages.
The Fiksu Indexes examine two distinct aspects of mobile app marketing which fluctuate from month to month — the first being competition for rank in the app stores and the second being the cost to acquire loyal users. The goal of the indexes is to allow mobile app brands to leverage the data and insight to gauge how their app’s marketing performance stacks up against the industry at large and to understand how dynamics – such as iOS upgrades, sales of mobile devices, advertiser demand and ad network/publisher inventory – impact business goals.
The indexes can diagnose why an app’s rank may have slipped one month due to spiking volumes of downloads among the Top 200 apps in the U.S. Or, it could help explain how limited ad space might cause loyal user acquisition costs to creep up.
Between March and June, for example, the Fiksu App Store Competitive Index found that the Top 200 free U.S. iPhone apps had an aggregate average of 4.34 million downloads per day. In addition, the Fiksu Cost per Loyal User Index determined that the average acquisition cost per loyal user, for brands who proactively marketed their apps, was $1.08. The data that Fiksu aggregates is pretty unique when compared to most mobile app data we see day in and day out. The data for the Fiksu Indexes was sourced from almost two billion mobile app actions – such as app launches, registrations and in-app purchases – recorded by apps marketed via the Fiksu for Mobile Apps user acquisition platform.
“The Fiksu Indexes provide app marketers with actionable and insightful data that illustrates the sheer numbers of downloads needed to compete for rank and the industry dynamics at play – so they can make more informed marketing decisions,” said Micah Adler, CEO, Fiksu. “For example, what we saw during March through June was the net effect of Apple’s ban on incentivized promotions causing a dip in volumes and a premium in marketing costs. Still, loyal user marketing remains more cost-effective than download campaigns or basic cost-per-click ad buys.” Some other key points outlined in the first two indexes include:
- App Store Competitive Index: April 2011 was the most competitive month – the Top 200 ranked free iPhone apps amassed an aggregate average of 4.610 million downloads per day. In May, this dropped to 3.78 million downloads per day but in June rose again to 4.505 million per day (a month in which Apple reported one billion total downloads).
- Cost per Loyal User Index: The index reported a steady increase: from $0.94 in March to $1.10 in May and $1.27 in June.
Much more information from these and future Indexes are available here
