A price the advertiser pays every time their app gets installed from an ad. Mobile user acquisition initiatives follow the CPI pricing model, which stands for Cost per Install. With this model, app publishers are paid each time users install an app they’ve promoted with an ad. Although this is a standard pricing strategy, mobile apps are the only ones that use it. The global average CPI is $2.24, with the US CPI for iOS devices being $2.37, China’s at $0.98, and Brazil’s at $0.22 on average. When it comes to CPI, the data is more widely available. So it’s a great tool for looking at historical trends, comparing different acquisition routes, and examining regional audiences.
Segmenting user data by location or platform allows marketers to discover new, highly valuable populations that deserve additional attention and targeting.CPI might also help you get a better grasp of your target audience’s size. Because of the huge player volume in hyper-casual markets, the CPI can be quite low. The most valued players make up a tiny number in other genres; hence, the high CPI. This is why marketers should focus on quality users rather than low CPI. App installations are simply one step in your marketing funnel, and measuring your cost per install can be helpful. Programmatic exchange auctions now calculate prices based on the cost per mille rather than the cost per installation.
It is instead the DSPs that set bids that match the ultimate goals of the advertisers — usually a combination of ROAS (return on ad spend), retention of users, and target CPC (cost per action) (CPA). Mobile advertising is completely moving away from the CPI model, even though business practices in APAC and other non-US geos still use it. Mobile app user acquisition costs are shown in CPI as a portion of the total cost of the app. User referral, co-marketing alliances, or other content marketing initiatives are different ways to generate consumers (often via browsing the app store or from a high app ranking) (i.e., blog, website, or email). Cost Per Install also has the drawback of only showing the first time a new user is captured. CPI is a snapshot that can become a vanity statistic if other metrics such as session length and engagement aren’t tracked because it’s highly improbable that you’ll keep 100 percent of new users.