Mobile app marketing was more expensive in April (qrcodepress.com)

Following a two month decline in that expense for developers, they were suddenly forking over more for their ads.

April brought about an increase in mobile app marketing costs after developers were able to take advantage of a decline that had continued for two consecutive months, according to a Fisku report.

That mobile marketing firm showed that acquiring new users became more expensive in April.

The Fiksu monthly report suggested that last month saw the end of a massive surge of mobile app marketing spending that had been experienced in March. This drew even more attention to the higher expenses that were being paid by smaller games and applications in order to be able to appeal to “high value” users throughout their campaigns. The report stated that “This is in contrast to many bigger brand spenders who are often more focused on overall volumes and lower costs per acquisition.”

The estimated increase of cost for marketing mobile apps was 5 percent, to become $1.52 in April.

At the same time, there was a 30 percent increase in the developers’ cost per launch over Android, which brought it to 13₵. For iOS that price rose by 20 percent to become 21₵. The increase, which was to $1.52, remains considerably lower than it had been in January, ahead of the tumble for two months, at which time it had been a tremendous $1.80.

The report showed that the cost per install index (CPI), that tracks the expense associated with achieving a download of the application, also increased by 21 percent for Android, to $1.31, while it rose by a higher 28 percent for iOS, to become $1.24. The Fiksu App Store Competitive Index, which provides download volume tracking among the leading 200 ranked apps for iPhone, fell by 25 percent in April, to become 5.34 million. This was a massive decline from the peak that was reached in March, which was 7.1 million.

At the same time, Fisku did warn those who would interpret these figures as a complete image of mobile apps and their marketing expenses, as it pointed out that the complete application landscape is not mirrored in these numbers. It pointed out that “Download volumes are simply being spread out across a wider set of apps than measured by the Index.”