Developers are finding that it’s becoming more and more expensive to acquire loyal users on their apps. Mobile app marketing costs reached record heights in 2013. However, while download growth has been slowing, app downloads are still higher than ever and growing.
As the app stores fill up, it’s getting ever more expensive for developers to acquire new users. The cost to acquire a loyal user, or one that opens an app three times, grew from $1.30 in 2012 to $1.62 in 2013. Meanwhile, app downloads over 2013 broke records, though the download growth has been slowing, as previous reports have pointed out, indicating that some maturer markets are nearing their saturation point.